Some “Blue Nights” Book Tour Details Released

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Vintage Books has provided Joan-Didion.info with the particulars of Joan Didion’s upcoming book tour promoting Blue Nights. In turn, we have added the information to our Readings and Events page. The full details of some events are not yet available, so we recommend that readers bookmark the page and check back for the latest updates. Didion will appear at [...]

Film of Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” in Development

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In the 1980s, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne were commissioned by the producer Elliott Krastner to write the screenplay for an adaptation of Norman Mailer’s novel, The Deer Park. In a caprice of the Hollywood system, the film never made it into production. However, The Daily reports that Cassian Elwes, Krastner’s stepson, recently inherited [...]

Didion Receives Honorary Degree from Yale

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Yale University awarded Joan Didion an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at commencement on Monday. Richard Levine, the president of the university, conferred the honor. He praised Didion’s influence on two generations of writers and the high standard her work continues to set for American prose. “In unflinching prose, you explore themes of love and [...]

First Review of “Blue Nights” Appears Online

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The first review of Joan Didion’s new book Blue Nights, which will not be released until November 1st 2011, has appeared online. The Kirkus Reviews website calls it a “slim somber classic” in which Didion “considers her daughter’s death and her inevitable own.” The short review includes a few revealing details about the content of [...]

Details Emerge About “Blue Nights”

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The publisher Knopf has released more details about the content of Didion’s new memoir, Blue Nights. The book will focus on her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, who died just before Didion’s previous memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, was published. It is said to address their relationship with “stunning frankness.” More generally, the book will speak to [...]

“Blue Nights” to Be Released on November 1, 2011

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Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s new memoir about aging, will be released by Knopf on November 1, 2011. It will be 208 pages in length. Amazon.com has begun allowing customers to pre-order this book, at a cost of $16.50 for the hardcover. A large print paperback edition will also be released on that date, and will [...]

Joan Didion Falls, Breaking Collarbone

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Joan Didion has fallen and broken her collarbone, according to a report in the Star Tribune. As a result of this development, Didion’s planned appearance at the University of Minnesota campus on April 13 has been cancelled. She was scheduled to give the 10th Anniversary Esther Freier Endowed Lecture at the Ted Mann Hall. A [...]

Didion the Focus of Awards Ceremony

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On Saturday night, the Columbia Spectator Awards Dinner took place at the Columbia Club on West 43rd Street in New York. Didion was in attendance to present the award named for her late daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. The New York Observer reports that Didion was the focus of much audience attention throughout the evening, despite [...]

Didion to Present Columbia Spectator’s Quintana Roo Dunne Award

Joan Didion will present the first Quintana Roo Dunne Award for Visual Achievement in memory of her late daughter, a Columbia Spectator alumna.

On February 12, Joan Didion will present the first Quintana Roo Dunne Award for Visual Achievement at the Columbia Spectator‘s Annual Awards Dinner at the Columbia University Club in New York. The award is named for Didion’s daughter who died in 2005. Quintana Roo Dunne graduated from Columbia’s Barnard College in 1989, having served as the [...]

The White Album, Now in Color

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James McMullen, best known as a designer of theatrical posters, illustrated the extended excerpt of “The White Album” which appeared in New West magazine on June 4, 1979. The essay, about the unrest of the Californian counterculture in the 1960s and its aftermath, gave its title to a collection of Joan Didion’s essays published later [...]