Joan Didion

Joan Didion (/ˈdɪdiən/; born December 5, 1934) is an American journalist and writer of novels, screenplays, and autobiographical works. Didion is best known for her literary journalism and memoirs. In her novels and essays, Didion explores the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos; the overriding theme of her work is individual and social fragmentation.^[2]

At the peak of Didion's career, her writing was recognized for its significance in defining and observing American subcultures for mainstream audiences. In 1968, The New York Times referred to her early work as containing "grace, sophistication, nuance, [and] irony."^[3] In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography for The Year of Magical Thinking. She later adapted the book into a play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007.

In 2017, Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne.^[4]