The 34 Best Memoirs by Female Authors Worth Reading Make room on the nightstand. Marie Claire · Jun 26, 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
Should Joan Didion’s therapy notes to her husband about their daughter have been published? Joan Didion died, aged 87, in 2021. When a new volume of her diaries was announced, anticipation was high: her personal nonfiction is the foundation of her formidable literary legacy. But as details emerged, readers began to question the ethics of its publication. The Conversation · May 12, 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
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
Graydon Carter hired Christopher Hitchens, pissed off Trump and revealed Deep Throat. He calls himself a ‘beta male’ The editor of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones, is stepping down after seven years. Amid the media buzz about who might take her role – long considered a plum one – is a surprising question. “Is it still a good job?” asked the New York Times last week. The Conversation · Apr 21, 2025
‘I dealt with everyone at a distance’: what do Joan Didion’s therapy diaries reveal about guilt, motherhood and writing? The writer’s previously unpublished notes from her sessions with a psychiatrist offer an incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression and creativity The Guardian - UK · Apr 19, 2025
Literary gold … or betrayal of trust? Joan Didion journal opens ethical minefield Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we? The Guardian - UK · Feb 23, 2025
Joan Didion and Eve Babitz: The uneasy bond between two very different literary ‘it girls’ THE READING LIST: A new book explores the friendship and rivalry between two very different chroniclers of Sixties and Seventies Los Angeles – and shines a light upon why a new generation of readers are still obsessed with Didion and Babitz decades later, writes Katie Rosseinsky The Independent UK · Nov 24, 2024
Eve Babitz and Joan Didion may be dead. But their feud isn’t A new book on the Los Angeles authors leaves no petty stone unturned as it explores their fraught friendship The Guardian - US · Nov 23, 2024
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik review –the seductress and the sphinx This account of the purported bond between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, two fascinating chroniclers of late 20th-century America, is titillating but diminishes both writers The Guardian - UK · Nov 17, 2024
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik review – friendship and rivalry in LA The journalist and author of Hollywood’s Eve makes no pretence of impartiality as she charts the difficult relationship between two chroniclers of California The Guardian - UK · Nov 13, 2024
What to Know About Dominick Dunne and His Connection to 'Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story' The late actress' crime writer father Dominick Dunne greatly influenced public opinion of the Menendez case. Marie Claire · Sep 26, 2024
The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review – a Hollywood insider with an outsider’s eye The actor’s star-studded memoir-cum-account of his sister’s murder could have been a clunky read, but his self-awareness, honesty and humour make the nephew of Joan Didion and son of Dominick Dunne an engaging narrator The Guardian - UK · Jun 16, 2024
The Independent UK · Jun 10, 2024 Griffin Dunne finds balance between madcap Hollywood adventures and family tragedy in new memoir Griffin Dunne's new memoir, “The Friday Afternoon Club, A Family Memoir,” out Tuesday from Penguin Press, is filled with raucous tales of growing up in Hollywood — from sneaking into his parents’ dinner parties featuring Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, to Sean Connery saving him from drowning in a pool
The Guardian - UK · Jun 6, 2024 ‘I’ll never forgive or forget’ – Griffin Dunne on the darkness that overtook his gilded Hollywood upbringing Griffin Dunne’s memoir is full of wonderful tales about Martin Scorsese, Carrie Fisher and Madonna. But the killing in 1982 of his 22-year-old sister – and the subsequent trial – overshadows everything
The Guardian - UK · Oct 2, 2023 The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell review – bits and pieces of a literary pioneer A ‘fangirl’’s fragmented study of the great US author has a disparate and magpie approach that never coheres into a satisfying whole
The Independent UK · Jan 27, 2023 Didion-Dunne archives acquired by New York Public Library The archives of the late Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne have been acquired by the New York Public Library
The Guardian - UK · Dec 8, 2022 Robert Duvall’s 20 best performances – ranked! From the horse’s head in The Godfather to the smell of napalm in Apocalypse Now, no one does chilling menace like the 91-year-old Oscar-winner. With the release this month of his new film, we rate his greatest roles
The Conversation · Nov 16, 2022 Joan Didion for sale: the auction of the author's belongings reveals the grand fiction of her image There are few writers as visually distinctive as Joan Didion. We have glimpses of her as a young reporter with her delicately poised silk scarf and anorak. A decade later we see her on the porch of her Malibu home, casting an ironic glance at her partner and daughter in…
WEKU · Nov 16, 2022 Writer Joan Didion's possessions sell for eye-popping prices at auction The late author Joan Didion was an exemplar of the New Journalism of the 1960s. Many fans traveled to Hudson, N.Y., to see some of her possessions up for auction. A pair of sunglass fetched $27,000.
The Guardian - US · Nov 10, 2022 ‘Pull back the shroud of mystery’: Joan Didion’s revealing estate sale The often secretive author’s belongings will be available to bid for at an expansive and eye-opening auction
Chicago Sun-Times · Nov 3, 2022 Joan Didion estate sale features author’s notebooks, sunglasses, typewriter The auction, titled ‘An American Icon: Property from the Collection of Joan Didion’ will take place at Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York, and online Nov. 16.