Joan Didion bibliography explained

This is a list of works by and on American author Joan Didion.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
The White Album (1979)
Salvador (1983)
Miami (1987)
After Henry (1992)
Political Fictions (2001)
Where I Was From (2003)
Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003; essay first published in the January 16, 2003 issue of The New York Review of Books)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Blue Nights (2011)
(2017)
Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021)

Anthologies

Vintage Didion (2004; includes excerpts from previous nonfiction works)
Live and Learn (2005; includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and After Henry)
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (2006; includes Didion's first seven volumes of nonfiction)
I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking: Collected Nonfiction (2025 [upcoming]; includes Didion's last four books)

Library of America collection

Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s (2019; edited by David L. Ulin)
Joan Didion: The 1980s & 90s (2021; edited by David L. Ulin)
Joan Didion: Memoirs & Later Writings (2024 [upcoming]; edited by David L. Ulin)

Uncollected essays and articles

Below are essays and articles by Didion that have not been published in book form to date.

Berkeley's Giant: The University of California . . January 1960.
Et tu, Mrs. Miniver . . January 2, 1960 .
Marriage a la Mode . National Review . August 13, 1960 .
San Francisco Job Hunt . Mademoiselle . September 1960 . 128–29.
Washington, D.C.: Anything Can Happen Here . Mademoiselle . November 1960.
Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness? . Vogue. June 1961 .
Take No for an Answer . Vogue . October 1, 1961 .
When it was Magic Time in Jersey . Vogue . September 15, 1962 .
Emotional Blackmail: An Affair of Every Heart . Vogue . November 15, 1962 .
American Summer . Vogue . May 1963 .
I'll Take Romance . National Review . September 24, 1963.
Silver to Have and to Hurl . Vogue . April 1, 1964.
Bosses Make Lousy Lovers . . January 31, 1965 .
New Museum in Mexico . Vogue . August 1, 1965 .
Questions About the New Fiction . National Review . November 30, 1965 .
The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall . The Saturday Evening Post . 3 December 1966 .
On the Last Frontier with VX and GB . Life. February 20, 1970.
Where Tonight Show Guests Go to Rest . Esquire. October 1976 .
News: Falconer . . March 6, 1977. (Review of Falconer by John Cheever)
Getting the Vegas Willies . Esquire . May 1977 .
News: Meditation on a Life . The New York Times . April 29, 1979. (Review of Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick)
Letter from 'Manhattan' . The New York Review of Books . August 16, 1979 . en . 0028-7504.
News: 'I want to go ahead and do it' . The New York Times . October 7, 1979 . (Review of The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer)
Without Regret or Hope . The New York Review of Books . June 12, 1980 . en . 0028-7504.
Discovery . The New York Review of Books . October 1, 1984 . en . 0028-7504.
Varieties of Madness . The New York Review of Books . April 23, 1998 . en . 0028-7504.
'The Day Was Hot and Still...' . The New York Review of Books . November 4, 1999 . en . 0028-7504.
Mr. Bush & the Divine . The New York Review of Books . November 6, 2003 . en . 0028-7504.
Politics in the 'New Normal' America . The New York Review of Books . October 21, 2004 . en . 0028-7504.
The Case of Theresa Schiavo . The New York Review of Books . June 9, 2005 . en . 0028-7504.
Cheney: The Fatal Touch . The New York Review of Books . October 5, 2006 . en . 0028-7504.
On Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) . The New York Review of Books . February 14, 2008 . en . 0028-7504. (With Darryl Pinckney; from remarks delivered at a memorial service for Elizabeth Hardwick on December 16, 2007)
Web site: Joan Didion on 'Election by sound bite' . Salon . 17 October 2008.
Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone . The New York Review of Books . December 18, 2008 . en . 0028-7504. (With Darryl Pinckney; adapted from comments made at a symposium at the New York Public Library on November 10, 2008)
In Sable and Dark Glasses . Vogue . October 31, 2011 .

Screenplays and plays

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) (with husband John Gregory Dunne and based on the novel by James Mills)
Play It as It Lays (1972) (with John Gregory Dunne and based on her novel)
A Star Is Born (1976) (with John Gregory Dunne)
True Confessions (1981) (with John Gregory Dunne and based on his novel of the same name)
Up Close & Personal (1996) (with John Gregory Dunne)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) (a stage play based on her book)

Biographies of and memoirs about Didion

Below are biographies of and memoirs about Didion.

Book: Anolik . Lili . Didion and Babitz . 2024 . Scribner . New York . 978-1668065488. (Upcoming)
Book: Daugherty . Tracy . The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion . 2015 . St. Martin's Publishing Group . New York . 978-1250105943. Tracy Daugherty.
Book: Davidson . Sara . The Didion Files: Fifty Years of Friendship with Joan Didion . 2023. Independently published. 979-8856871998. Sara Davidson.
Book: Dunne . Griffin . The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir . 2024 . Penguin Press . New York . 978-0593652824. Griffin Dunne.
Book: Leadbeater . Cory . The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir . 2024 . Ecco . New York . 978-0063371576.

Conversations and interviews

Book: Friedman, Ellen G. . Ellen G. Friedman . Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations . 1984 . Ontario Review Press . Princeton . 978-0865380356.
Book: Melville House . Joan Didion: The Last Interview and Other Conversations . 2022 . Melville House . New York . 978-1685890117.
Book: Parker, Scott F. . Conversations with Joan Didion . 2018 . University Press of Mississippi . Jackson . 9781496815514.

Books on Didion's work

Book: Als . Hilton . Hilton Als . Joan Didion: What She Means . 2022 . DelMonico Books . New York . 978-1636810577. (Companion book to the Hammer Museum exhibition of the same name)
Book: Berman . Jeffrey . Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C.S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillin . 2010 . University of Massachusetts Press . Amherst . 978-1558498044. Jeffrey Berman.
Book: Dean . Michelle . Michelle Dean . Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion . 2018 . Grove Press . New York . 978-0802125095.
Book: Felton, Sharon . The Critical Response to Joan Didion . 1994. Greenwood Publishing Group . Westport, Connecticut . 978-0313285349.
Book: Henderson . Katherine Usher . Joan Didion . 1981 . Frederick Ungar . New York . 978-0804423700. Katherine Usher Henderson.
Book: Houston . Lynn Marie . Lombardi . William V. . Reading Joan Didion . 2009 . Greenwood Press . Santa Barbara, California . 978-0313364037.
Book: Loris . Michelle C. . Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion . 1989 . Peter Lang . New York . 978-0820406619.
Book: McDonnell . Evelyn . The World According to Joan Didion . 2023 . HarperOne . New York . 978-0063289079. Evelyn McDonnell.
Book: McLennan . Matthew R. . Joan Didion and the Ethics of Memory . 2022 . Bloomsbury Academic . London . 978-1350149595.
Book: McClure . John A. . Late Imperial Romance . 1994 . Verso Books . London; New York . 978-0860916123.
Book: Nelson . Deborah . Deborah L. Nelson . Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil . 2017 . University of Chicago Press . Chicago . 978-0226457802.
Book: Nelson, Steffie . Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light . 2020 . Rare Bird Books . Los Angeles . 978-1644281673.
Book: Nowak-McNeice . Katarzyna . California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion's Novels: Exiled from Eden . 2018 . Routledge . New York . 978-0429655319.
Book: Parrish . Timothy . From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction . 2008 . University of Massachusetts Press . Amherst . 978-1558496279.
Book: Scarpino, Cinzia . Zehelein, Eva-Sabine . Joan Didion: Life and/with/through Words . 2023 . Peter Lang . Berlin . 978-3631894408.
Book: Stout, Janis P. . Strategies of Reticence: Silence and Meaning in the Works of Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion . 1990 . University Press of Virginia . Charlottesville . 978-0813912622.
Book: Szalay . Michael . Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party . 2012 . Stanford University Press . Redwood City, California . 978-0804776356.
Book: Vandenberg . Kathleen M. . Joan Didion: Substance and Style . 2021 . State University of New York Press . Albany . 978-1438481388.
Book: Weingarten . Marc . The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution . 2010 . Crown Publishing Group . New York. 978-0307525697.
Book: Wilkinson . Alissa . We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine . 2025 . Liveright . New York . 978-1324092612. (Upcoming)