Joan Didion

Joan Didion was an American journalist, novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter whose precise, unsentimental prose examined American culture, politics, family, and loss. Her major works include *Slouching Towards Bethlehem*, *The White Album*, *Play It As It Lays*, and *The Year of Magical Thinking*, which won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Born in Sacramento, she began her writing career at *Vogue* after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley.