“We’re thrilled to welcome New York Times film critic and author Alissa Wilkinson to Skylark for what is going to be an outstanding evening of conversation about one of the most iconic figures of American letters: Joan Didion.

Joan Didion opened The White Album with what would become one of the most iconic lines in American literature: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Today, this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, used as a battle cry for artists and writers. In truth, Didion was describing something much less rosy: our human tendency to manufacture delusions that might ward away our anxieties when society seems to spin off its axis. Nowhere was this collective hallucination more effectively crafted than in Hollywood.

Although she launched her career in New York City, Didion soon struck out for Los Angeles, where the nation’s dreams were manufactured—and every aspect of her work reflected what she saw there, whether she was writing on politics, society, or herself. In this riveting cultural biography, Wilkinson takes a fresh perspective on Didion’s career as a novelist, critic, and screenwriter deeply embroiled in the grit and glamour of Hollywood. In eloquent prose, she charts how Didion became intimately acquainted with power players of the Los Angeles elite, arriving in the twilight of the old studio system in time to see lines between the industry and public life blur. Peering through a scrim of celluloid, Wilkinson incisively dissects the motifs and machinations that informed Didion’s writing—and how her writing, ultimately, demonstrated Hollywood’s addictive grasp on American identity.”