“A Place None of Us Know”: Writing, Loss, and Joan Didion’s Late Memoirs

Thursday, November 14—Grief, Joan Didion wrote, “turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” In two luminous memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, collected in the capstone volume of Library of America’s Didion edition, she relates the twin tragedies of her husband and daughter’s deaths with stunning precision, poignancy, and power—a late flowering of her genius that won her millions of new readers. Join Honor Moore and volume editor David L. Ulin—two acclaimed authors who have confronted grief in their own writing—for a free, virtual LOA LIVE program exploring Didion’s achingly beautiful accounts of bereavement and the ways literature can illuminate the search for meaning and consolation in the face of great loss. LOA LIVE programs are made possible by contributions from friends like you, and we encourage you to consider making a donation to support future presentations. Visit loa.org/loalive to donate.