"An elegant prose stylist . .
. Joan Didion possesses a distinct literary voice, widely praised for
its precision and control." Born in Sacramento to a fifth
generation Central Valley family, she received a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley in 1956. Among the many awards and nominations she has received are first prize in Vogue's Prix de Paris, 1956, National Book
Award nomination in fiction, 1971, American Book Award nomination in non fiction, 1981. Although she has published several novels, she has
received the greatest public attention for Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968, a collection of essays. More recently she has been collaborating
with her husband, John Gregory Dunn, on screen plays.
It was Didion's mother who gave her a
notebook and suggested she start writing. She wrote her first story at age 5. "In her quest for controlled perfection, Didion revises her
writing repeatedly, working and reworking the exact placement of important details."
From: Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series

"The willingness to accept
responsibility
for one's own life is the source from which
self-respect springs."
— Joan Didion
Salvador (1983)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
Requiem Por Una Burguesa (1978)
Democracy: a novel (1984)
Joan Didion: essays & conversations (1984)
The White Album (1979)
Miami (1987)
After Henry (1992)
A Book of Common Prayer (1977)
Play It As It Lays (1970)
Run River (1963)
The Last Thing He Wanted (1966)

"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral
imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the
land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
— Joan Didion

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