Joan Didion was born on December 5, 1934, in Sacramento, California, to Frank Reese and Eduene Didion. The prolific writer died on December 23, 2021, at the age of 87.
Didion recalled writing things down as early as the age of five, though she said that she never saw herself as a writer until after her work had been published. She identified as a “shy, bookish child” who pushed herself to overcome social anxiety through acting and public speaking. She read everything she could get her hands on. She spent her adolescence typing out Ernest Hemingway’s works to learn more about how sentence structures work.
Who Was Joan Didion’s Husband John Gregory Dunne?
While in New York and working at Vogue, Didion met John Gregory Dunne, her future husband, who was writing for Time magazine. The couple married in 1964 and moved to Los Angeles, intending to stay only temporarily, but California ultimately became their home for the next 20 years.
Dunne was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He was the son of Dorothy Frances and Richard Edwin Dunne (1894–1946), hospital chief of staff, and prominent heart surgeon.