> Be Joan Didion > Born in 1934 in Sacramento, California as the daughter of an Army finance officer. > Starts writing stories at around five years old. > As a teenager, she types out Hemingway's work to learn how his sentences are built. > Graduates from Berkeley in 1956. > In her senior year, wins Vogue's Prix de Paris essay contest with a piece about a San Francisco architect. > The prize is a job at the magazine, so she moves to New York. > Starts near the bottom, writing promotional copy, and works her way up over seven years. > Homesick for California, she writes her first novel while still at Vogue. Run, River is published in 1963. > Marries fellow writer John Gregory Dunne in 1964. > Two years later, they adopt a baby girl, Quintana Roo. > In 1967, she spends time among the young people of Haight-Ashbury and writes about what she sees. > In 1968, her first essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, puts her in the national spotlight. > Spends the following decades writing novels, essays and screenplays with her husband, also a writer. > December 2003: Quintana is in the hospital in an induced coma. > Within a week, John dies of a heart attack at their dinner table. > In October 2004, she sits down to write her way through it. > She finishes The Year of Magical Thinking in 88 days. > Before the book is published, Quintana dies at 39. > The book wins the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. > In 2011, she writes about losing her daughter in Blue Nights. > Dies in December 2021 at 87. And Joan Didion remains the clearest proof that writing isn't what you do after you understand your life. It's how you come to understand it. Joan was built different.