Joan Didion has been a novelist, essayist and screenwriter for more than three decades. In May 2005 she received the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is the highest honor the Academy awards to a writer and is given once every six years. She was awarded the 1996 Edward MacDowell Medal and the 1999 Columbia Journalism Award. In 2005 she won the National Book Award for The Year of Magical Thinking, which is now in its 20th printing.

Didion’s novels include Run River (1963), Play It As It Lays (1970), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). Her nonfiction includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1978), Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), After Henry (1992), Political Fictions (2001), and Where I Was From (2003).
 
Ms. Didion and her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, co-authored the screenplays The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Play It As It Lays (1973), A Star Is Born (1977), True Confessions (1982), Hills Like White Elephants (1990) and Up Close and Personal (1995). She has lectured at colleges and universities including UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Bard, Yale and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Ms. Didion currently lives in New York and is a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her latest book, The Year of Magical Thinking, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2005.
 

In spite of howling rain, Joan drew about 800 guests to the lecture. Her reading left everyone rather silent, stunned, introspective, and needing to tell people they love, simply, that they love them. I thought it was awesome. She is a gem.

Willamette University

Ms. Didion was born in Sacremento, California and graduated with a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. She lives in New York and is a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker.

In March 2007, The Year of Magical Thinking the play, which Didion adapted from her celebrated memoir, debuted on Broadway in a strictly limited, 24-week engagement, starring Academy Award and Tony Award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave.