Joan Didion
American writer and journalist
Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist, a pioneer of New Journalism who wrote the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking.
1 summary 22 min of listening
American Born 1934 in Sacramento, United States Died 2021
About Joan Didion
Born in Sacramento in 1934, Joan Didion finished her degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. Her career began in the 1950s after she won a Vogue magazine essay contest, and she later wrote for publications including Life, Esquire and The New Yorker. She published novels such as Run River and Play It As It Lays, as well as essay collections including Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. The Year of Magical Thinking is her memoir about the year after the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005, and she adapted it for the stage, with a Broadway premiere in 2007. Didion died in December 2021.