LOS ANGELES (KNX) — The internationally lauded writer Joan Didion has died at the age of 87, her publisher A.A. Knopf has confirmed.
The essayist, journalist, novelist, and screenwriter, long esteemed as one of America’s great writers, passed away at her home in New York City on Thursday morning from complications connected to a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
The writer was born in Sacramento in 1934, and was descended from pioneers who came to California in the 1800s. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956, where she launched her writing career by winning a Vogue magazine essay contest in her senior year.
Didion was perhaps best known for the 1968 collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, about her experiences in California — detailing life in San Francisco and the counterculture of the time.
In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. In 2012, she received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, who described her as one of “the sharpest and most respected observers of American politics and culture.”
She resided in Los Angeles for nearly 25 years.
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