News Release

Local angle: Memphis, Tenn.

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National Book Award winner Didion
to speak Feb. 28 at UNC-Chapel Hill

CHAPEL HILL — Joan Didion, author of the best-selling memoir "The Year of Magical Thinking," will speak on Feb. 28 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The book won the 2005 National Book Award for nonfiction.

As the 2006 Morgan Writer-in-Residence at UNC, Didion will present a free public reading at 7:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall. Parking is available after 5 p.m. in some campus lots and in pay lots on Rosemary Street.

A keen observer of politics and culture, Didion has written nine nonfiction books and five novels.

In "The Year of Magical Thinking," Didion examines the truth about intimacy, grief and denial during the year after her husband’s untimely death. The book begins: "Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

In December 2003, just weeks after her daughter lapsed into a coma, Didion’s husband of nearly 40 years, author John Gregory Dunne, suffered a fatal heart attack at their dinner table.

Dunne’s death propelled Didion into a state she calls "magical thinking." She finished the book late in 2004, and it was published in October 2005 — just two months after her daughter and only child, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, died at the age of 39.

The Washington Post called Didion’s memoir "a work of surprising clarity and honesty," and The New York Times named it one of the "10 Best Books of 2005." Publishers Weekly described the book as "an indispensable addition to Didion’s body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature."

Didion’s other nonfiction books include "Where I Was From," "Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11," "Political Fictions," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," "The White Album," "Salvador," "Miami" and "After Henry." Her novels include "Run River," "Play It as It Lays," "A Book of Common Prayer," "Democracy" and "The Last Thing He Wanted."

Didion and Dunne co-authored seven screenplays, including "Up Close and Personal" and the 1976 remake of "A Star is Born." Didion’s essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and other major magazines.

Her UNC visit is sponsored by the English department in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Morgan Writer-in-Residence Program. Carolina alumni Allen and Musette Morgan of Memphis, Tenn., established the program in 1993 to bring writers of distinction to the UNC campus.

Previous Morgan writers have included the late Shelby Foote, Annie Dillard, Beth Henley, Richard Ford, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Russell Banks, John Edgar Wideman, Tobias Wolff and Calvin Trillin.

For more information, call (919) 962-4283 or visit http://college.unc.edu.

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Didion photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/didion_joan.jpg

Morgan program contact: Susan Irons, 962-4283, susan_irons@unc.edu 

College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Weaver Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu