The Latest Breaking News from Joan Didion

‘Radical acceptance’: Yiyun Li lost both her sons to suicide. Her rigorous memoir reveals her as a very special writer

“My husband and I had two children and lost them both,” writes Yiyun Li early in her latest book, Things in Nature Merely Grow. And then, with harrowing directness, “Both chose suicide”.

The Conversation · Jun 18, 2025

The final fact-check of Joan Didion

One of the year’s best books yet shows us an author at odds with her own storytelling

Salon · Jun 14, 2025

Joan Didion's '70s Malibu dining room is a stunning slice of the Mediterranean – the terracotta tiles, wicker chairs, and wooden table are transcendent

Archival images of the writer's California home in 1972 are a masterclass in Spanish-style interiors – a designer explains how to recreate them

Homes & Gardens · Jun 7, 2025

The boom in health memoirs and what they can tell us about being human

IN FOCUS: Nick Duerden speaks to the writers who’ve spilled their vulnerabilities onto the page, and asks why readers are flocking to books about the spirit of survival

The Independent UK · May 9, 2025

Like Lena Dunham, I left my hometown. She’ll learn that what drives us away is often what draws us back

The Girls creator has moved from New York to London – and I did the reverse. Until one day I realised I didn’t want to die there, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

The Guardian - UK · May 7, 2025

Notes to John by Joan Didion: Dispatches from the therapist’s chair are a guilty pleasure

Joan Didion, who died in 2021, never intended Notes to John to be published. They are, as the title intimates, notes to her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and they are about meetings with her psychiatrist, Dr Roger MacKinnon, over the course of a little more than a year, beginning in…

Evening Standard · May 4, 2025

My friend Joan Didion wouldn’t have wanted her therapy notes to be published

Letter: Responding to an editorial about the publication of Notes to John, Clare Reihill writes that the late American writer never left anything to chance

The Guardian - UK · May 2, 2025

Notes to John by Joan Didion review – an invasion of privacy

There’s a crude fascination in seeing the contents of a literary celebrity’s therapy sessions, but no one comes out of it well

The Guardian - UK · Apr 28, 2025

I’ve never kept a diary. But if I had, I’d want it destroyed when I die

From Samuel Pepys to Joan Didion, many literary greats wrote for no one but themselves – then found posterity pawing through their secrets. Trust me: you don’t want to know my innermost thoughts

The Guardian - UK · Apr 27, 2025

The Guardian view on posthumously publishing Joan Didion: goodbye to all that

Editorial: Would the legendary American writer have welcomed the publication of her therapy notes? It seems unlikely

The Guardian - UK · Apr 25, 2025