“It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.”

American writer and journalist

Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is known as one of the figures associated with New Journalism. Her work is linked with the movement that brought literary techniques into reporting, alongside writers such as Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe. Her writing is often remembered for that journalistic style and for the influence she had on modern nonfiction.