My Year With Joan Didion
About the “My Year with” Blog Series
This blog invites readers into my month-by-month journey with one of my creative luminaries. I see this series as both a public humanities experiment and a bibliomemoir in the making.
I first developed this blog concept because I wanted to test what it means to read in public and make my ongoing writing and creative processes transparent. I also wanted to model the kind of blogging about literature that I ask my students to do, a case of walking the walk in my own writing practice.
Each post is a way to record, in real time, what I learn about writing, creativity, and style, and how these lessons translate to my own creative practices of teaching and writing.
I will select one author or artist per academic year, working chronologically through their body of work. My goal is to post monthly at a minimum for a full academic year. Blogging, then, becomes a form of public accountability and a deliberate space carved out for sustained reading and the inspiration it brings.
On Choosing Joan Didion
For many, Joan Didion is the patron saint of writers. She certainly has a place in my pantheon of creative women. But I don’t want this to be the start of yet another essay or book on Didion that tries to mimic her style or position itself as the “key” to unlocking someone so complex.
I chose Joan Didion for my first “My Year with” series because she has become a recurring presence in many of the courses I teach. I first assigned pieces of her writing in my Once Upon a Time in Hollywood-themed Intro to Fiction course a few years ago, before I taught an entire class on Didion and the art of nonfiction last spring. Currently, her writing about college is a staple in my Education & Its Aims course.
I’ve written about Didion here and there as I’ve taught her, but rarely have I published or shared this work beyond the classroom. I see this blog as starting from scratch: a hybrid experiment in public (re)reading, bibliomemoir, and pedagogical reflection. A space where my reading life, creative practice, and teaching intersect in real time.
Didion was— is— personally and creatively complicated. And I am curious to see how my assessments of her oeuvre evolve and what new insights and applications sustained, chronological reading brings to the table.