CHAPTER SIX JOAN DIDION

The Summer of 1955

This might well be the earliest and least-known public photograph of Joan Didion. With one year left to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Didion was in New York in 1955, staying at the Barbizon as a Mademoiselle guest editor. Looking very young and very happy, she poses for the camera while interviewing Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and short story writer Jean Stafford.