Joan Didion, novelist, essayist and screenwriter, will receive the 2002 Saint Louis Literary Award from the Library Associates at a ceremony in the university's Anheuser-Busch Auditorium of the John Cook School of Business, 3674 Lindell Boulevard, on Tuesday, October 1 at 5 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.
Ms. Didion was born in Sacramento, California. She is the author of a number of novels, including Run River, Play It As It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, Democracy, and The Last Thing He Wanted. Her non-fiction work includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry and her recent collection of essays, Political Fictions.
Among Ms. Didion's awards are the 1996 Edward McDowell Medal and the 1999 Columbia Journalism Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Berkeley Fellows, and the Council of Foreign Relations.
Ms. Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, have co-authored a number of screenplays. She has lectured at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is also a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker.
This is the 35th year the award has been given by the Associates, a group dedicated to enriching the cultural life of the area and providing financial help to the University's libraries. Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel laureates, and other distinguished writers from the United States and abroad have come to St. Louis to receive the honor and address members of the community.
For more information, call Bernice H. Shepherd at 314-361-1616.
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