Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne were American writers who lived and worked together in a personal and professional partnership from the late 1950s until 2003. During this time, Didion and Dunne became known for fiction and nonfiction writing. They shared feedback and research materials throughout their careers. In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction, Didion and Dunne collaborated on screenplays, television scripts, and treatments.
Joan Didion (1934-2021) was an American writer of novels, journalistic articles, screenplays, and memoirs. She was born to Eduene (née Jerrett) and Frank Reese Didion in Sacramento, California. In high school, Didion worked on the student newspaper and went on to write for the campus literary journal while attending the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s. During her senior year, Didion received the "Prix de Paris" award from Vogue magazine and was awarded a trip to New York City to work on an issue of the magazine. Didion was ultimately hired as an associate features editor for Vogue, and several of her pieces that appeared in the magazine were later republished in her essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).
John Gregory Dunne (1932-2003) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He was the fifth of six children born to Dorothy Frances (née Burns) and Richard Edwin Dunne in Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated from Portsmouth Priory School in Rhode Island in 1950 and from Princeton University in 1954. After serving in the Army Reserve for four years, Dunne moved to New York City, working at an advertising agency and as a journalist at Time.
In the late 1950s, Didion and Dunne met through their mutual friend, Noel Parmentel, a writer for The National Review, where Didion had begun writing essays and reviews. In 1961, Dunne's first freelance piece "Men and Manners: From Steerage to Suburbia" was published in the National Review. During this time, Didion started work on her first novel, Run, River (1963), and shared her early drafts with Dunne, marking the start of their collaborative literary relationship. The pair developed a romantic relationship and married in January 1964.
Didion and Dunne left New York City shortly after their marriage and relocated to Southern California. In 1966, the couple adopted a daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne (1966-2005). While Didion and Dunne wrote their novels and journalism independently, they often edited, revised, and gave feedback on each other's work. In the 1960s, they shared the by-line for a regular column called "Points West" for The Saturday Evening Post.
Didion continued to write for Vogue until the publication of Slouching Towards Bethlehem in 1968. A descendant of generations of Californians, Didion's early work often explored California's culture, contradictions, and myths about Californian identity. These were central themes of her second book of nonfiction essays, The White Album (1979).
After moving to California, Didion and Dunne worked together in the film industry, where they wrote, revised, and polished screenplays. The couple collaborated on several produced and many more unproduced screenplays and television scripts for major Hollywood studios and broadcasting companies. Dunne's older brother, Dominick Dunne, formed a film company with the couple called Dunne-Didion-Dunne in the early 1970s. Dominick Dunne produced their screenplay The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and the Didion-adapted book Play It As It Lays in 1972. Didion and Dunne wrote early drafts of A Star is Born (1976), and later, the screenplay for Up Close Personal (1996).
Beginning in the late 1970s, Dunne frequently contributed to The New York Review of Books and Esquire, reviwing books and writing long-form nonfiction essays. Dunne often investigated crime, criminal trials, patriotism and war, small-town culture, Irish Catholicism, Los Angeles, social class, and the Hollywood film industry in his journalism and books. Dunne's novels include Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season (1974) and True Confessions (1977). His non-fiction books include Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike (1967) The Studio (1969), Harp (1989), and Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (1997).
In the 1980s, Didion wrote several long-form essays and novels about conflicts in El Salvador as well as the racial and social dynamics of Cuban exiles in Miami (1987). In the 1980s and 1990s, New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers encouraged Didion to start covering American presidential campaigns. Didion remained interested in politics, but returned to a more self-relective form of journalism with her 2003 book of essays, Where I Was From (2003).
In December 2003, Quintana Roo Dunne was admitted to the hospital and induced into a coma after flu symptoms developed into septic shock. A week later, John Dunne suffered a heart attack and died at home. Quintana Roo Dunne died on August 26, 2005. Didion explored the experience of grieving her husband and daughter in two memoirs: The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011).
Dunne's posthumous novel, Nothing Lost, was published in 2004. Didion published a collection of essays in 2021 titled Let Me Tell You What I Mean. She died due to complications from Parkinson's Disease on December 23, 2021, in New York City.
