Last call for Didion event tonight

A little masterclass! And a few more things at the bottom there.

Hi, friends. If you have some free time today (Thursday, June 5) around, say, 8pm EST, and you’re interested in Joan Didion, mythologies, history, or me, you might want to join me for this masterclass I am teaching on the Five Things I’ve Learned platform.

I’ll be talking about all the things I’ve learned about how and why we construct mythologies from studying and writing about Joan Didion, including in my book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, which as you probably know is about Didion and Hollywood and American public culture. It’s fun! And the class will be too.

There’s a video on the site of me gabbing about the workshop. I’d love to see you there!

And if you can’t make it, Five Things has passes you can grab to watch the replay as well as workshops by all the other (truly) amazing writers and artists who’ve done masterclasses for them.

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I’ve been off work for two weeks, which is why I haven’t sent you a lot of links of things to read. But don’t miss my review of Wes Anderson’s latest film The Phoenician Scheme, aka Wes Gets Religious, and a little column on a new documentary about The Day After.

And while I’m here, some upcoming Didion-related and workshop-related things:

• Next Tuesday, June 10 - I’ll be at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York for a book event related to their screening of Play It As It Lays. More info and tickets here.

• Starting June 23, I’ll be teaching another round of my popular Center for Fiction workshop on the review as creative writing, which will meet for 8 Monday nights at 6pm. This sold out last fall so don’t wait too long. Here are more details and the registration link.

• Beginning July 12, I’ll also teach another round of my four-week Center for Fiction course on reading and writing Joan Didion, which is more of a craft course and discussion of Didion’s lesser-read essays. We’ll look at how she did what she did, and why. This time we’ll meet on Zoom! Saturdays, 1:00-3:00pm EST, for four weeks, more details and registration here.

• For the New Yorkers, I’ll be chatting about Joan and Hollywood in Bryant Park around lunchtime on July 28 — more details here.