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 NEWS

For immediate use

Jan. 28, 2004 - No. 38

Brief

Joan Didion lecture at UNC postponed

Writer Joan Didion will not be lecturing at UNC-Chapel Hill this spring as previously announced. Didion, author of  "Where I Was From" and 18 other works of fiction and non-fiction, was scheduled to visit UNC during the week of March 1 as the 2004 Morgan Writer-in-Residence, including a public lecture March 3. Those activities have been postponed at the author's request due to a recent death and continuing illness in the family, said James Thompson, professor and chairman of the Department of English, which sponsors the Morgan Writer-in-Residence program.

Didion's husband, the screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, suffered a fatal heart attack at the end of December while visiting their daughter, who has been seriously ill.

Didion is considering an invitation to lecture at UNC sometime next year.

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