Latest Joan Didion News

Book Review: A new book about cult favorite Eve Babitz throws shade on reputation of Joan Didion

Nov. 11, 2024 14:09 PM EST

An entire generation of literary-minded women has not stopped telling itself stories influenced by master storyteller Joan Didion. The same, alas, cannot be said of Eve Babitz, a Hollywood bad girl whose life briefly intersected with Didion’s in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Few...

'Demon Copperhead' author Barbara Kingsolver to receive National Book Award for lifetime achievement

Sep. 06, 2024 11:12 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Kingsolver, this year's recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn't imagine receiving such honors. “I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers....

Noel Parmentel Jr., a literary gadfly with some famous friends, dies at 98

Sep. 04, 2024 17:53 PM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — Noel E. Parmentel Jr., an essayist, pundit, filmmaker and man about town who satirized politicians across ideology, dated and helped promote a young Joan Didion and otherwise charmed and infuriated New York’s literary elite, has died at age 98. Parmentel's...