Replay: Alissa Wilkinson shares Five Things She's Learned about the Power and Peril of Mythmaking, from Joan Didion
Check out the first five minutes of her recent class.
“Whether you’re a Didion aficionado or haven’t read any of her work, I hope you’ll join me to discover what she has to say, and get a new perspective from her on our current cultural moment. Plus, you’ll come away with a fabulous introduction to the life and work of one of her generation’s greatest writers.”
– Alissa Wilkinson, Five Things I’ve Learned about The Power and Peril of Mythmaking, from Joan Didion
Last Thursday, film critic, author, and teacher
joined to share all she’s learned about how we develop our personal mythologies by studying and writing about Joan Didion.Alissa is a critic at The New York Times and the author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine (Liveright, 2025), a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through Didion’s life and work. She teaches nonfiction writing at NYU and the Center for Fiction. Her previous book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking and Living from Revolutionary Women, was published in 2022. Since 2005, her criticism has appeared in Vox, The New York Times Book Review, Vulture, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, RogerEbert.com, and more. She holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. in humanities and social thought from NYU.
We also encourage you to discover her great Substack newsletter, too:
Drawing from her recent book, Alissa’s Five Things I’ve Learned about The Power and Peril of Mythmaking, from Joan Didion uses Didion’s life and work as a lens to explore the ways we all construct and live within personal mythologies. From Didion’s iconic public image to her Hollywood screenwriting and political commentary, she considers topics such as the stories we inherit from family and culture, the role of imagery and celebrity, and the ways that writing helps us unpack the myths we live by.
Whether you're a longtime fan of Didion or new to her work, Alissa’s class offers fresh insight into her legacy and what it reveals about our current cultural moment.
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