Obituary

Joan Didion, Novelist, Essayist and Cultural Icon, Dies at 87

  • Wrote ‘The Year of Magical Thinking,’ classic of bereavement
  • Screenwriter and leading figure in New Journalism of 1960s

Joan Didion

Photographer: Kathy Willens/AP Photo

Joan Didion, the American writer whose memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005, has died. She was 87.

Didion’s publisher, Penguin Random House, said that she had died from complications from Parkinson’s disease, the Associated Press reported.