The author Joan Didion was born December 5, 1934 in Sacramento, California, USA. She died December 23, 2021 aged 87, due to complications from Parkinson's disease.

Didion was a leader of the New Journalism movement in the 1960s and '70s. She was given numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama in 2013, and the National Book Award for Nonfiction, in 2005 for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of her grief dealing with the sudden death of her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne.