Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934-2021) was born in Sacramento and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation, she moved to New York and began working for Vogue, which led to her career as a journalist and writer. Didion published her first novel, Run River, in 1963. 

Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. Also in 2005, Didion was awarded the American Academy of Arts & Letters Gold Medal in Belles Lettres and Criticism. In 2007, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2013, she was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Didion said of her writing: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”