Joan Didion is an American writer known for her journalism, nonfiction, and novels, all written in a cool, incisive style. Didion was born on December 5, 1934 in Sacramento, California and moved often with her parents during her early childhood. In 1956, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in English and went to work for the magazine Vogue for seven years, during which she wrote her first novel, Run, River (1963), and met and married her husband John Gregory Dunne.
The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and became active members of the cultural and literary scene there. Didion’s first nonfiction collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem ...