Diane Johnson - "Author of the Month" - July 2021
Diane Johnson (b. 1934, Diane Lain, Illinois), is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living abroad in contemporary France.
She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books since the mid-1970s.
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Lesser Lives, her biography of Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1973.
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Her novel Lying Low was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979.
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In 1980, with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, Johnson co-authored the screenplay to The Shining, based on Stephen King's horror novel.
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In 1983 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Price in Non-fiction for her essay collection Terrorists and Novelists.
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She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Persian Nights in 1988.
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In 1997, Le Divorce was a National Book Award finalist and the winner of the California Book Award gold medal for fiction. A film adaption of the novel, starring Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts, was released in 2003.
Photo credit penguinrandomhouse.com