Who

A prolific novelist, essayist, and screenwriter, Didion is considered one of America's leading intellectuals.

Backstory

A native of Sacramento, Didion graduated from UC Berkeley in 1956 and headed east for an internship at Vogue. She spent eight years at the magazine, during which time she wrote her first novel, 1963's River Run. Her first essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem—a portrait of California counterculture in the '60s—appeared in 1968 and established Didion as an important writer; it also got her lumped in with the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, although she was never closely connected with them. She published the bestselling novel Play It As It Lays in 1970, earning a nomination for the National Book Award. From there, she published at a steady clip, averaging a book every three to four years for the remainder of the twentieth century. She excelled at both fiction and nonfiction, writing novels like Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996), essay collections like The White Album (1979) and Political Fictions (2001), and works of reportage like Salvador (1983) and Miami (1987).

Of note

For decades Didion has been one of America's leading political journalists, and these days her fierce denunciations of the Bush Administration can frequently be found in the New York Review of Books. But the book that became her most acclaimed work in years—if not ever—was personal, not political. In 2003, her longtime husband John Gregory Dunne—with whom she'd collaborated on screenplays like a 1976 remake of A Star Is Born and 1996's Up Close and Personal—suddenly died a few days after the couple's adult daughter Quintana Roo fell into a coma. Didion turned these tragedies into the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. The book was published in 2005 to extravagant critical praise and went on to win the National Book Award. It was also adapted (by Didion) into a less-lauded play, which opened on Broadway in 2007 with Didion's friend Vanessa Redgrave playing her.

Personal

Didion and Dunne adopted a daughter, Quintana Roo, in 1966. In August 2005, in what stands as a devastating epilogue to The Year of Magical Thinking, Quintana Roo died from complications stemming from pancreatitis.

Habitat

As president of her Upper East Side apartment building's co-op board, Didion was named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by peeved residents upset with tenant Cindy Crawford. The supermodel was allegedly bothering neighbors with excessive noise and the "intimate sounds of daily life."

No joke

Vanessa Redgrave's daughter, actress Natasha Richardson, was married in the living room of Didion's apartment. Music at the reception was provided by Redgrave and party guest Rupert Everett, who sang a duet of "Edelweiss."