Reading Groups

In Short: Selections from Joan Didion’s The White Album with Meredith Mann

Tuesday, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT January 27, 2026

The Center for Fiction

The White Album Essays FSG Classics Joan Didion

Registration includes a complimentary drink from our Café & Bar. The ‘With Books’ option includes a copy of Joan Didion’s The White Album at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Gather at The Center for Fiction with Meredith Mann, the Interim Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts at The New York Public Library, to discuss Joan Didion’s environmental nonfiction writing.

Through prose both incisive and cinematic, Didion explores our individual and collective attempts to understand and control the natural world in her 1979 essay collection The White Album. This session provides an accessible entry point for new readers engaging with Didion for the first time, while longtime readers can revel in her precise language and make connections to her wider body of work. As California continues to face wildfires and water shortages, Didion’s writing resonates with our own time of climate precarity. Explore how these essays retain their urgency over four decades later.

Note: Attendees of this reading group will be invited for a tour of selections from the Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers at The New York Public Library’s 42nd Street building.

What to read in advance: Please read “Holy Water,” “At the Dam,” “Quiet Days in Malibu,” and “Why I Write” by Joan Didion. A PDF of the first three essays will be emailed to all participants upon registration and can also be purchased in Didion’s The White Album.

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a discussion-based group, where participants are encouraged to share their views and reactions to Didion’s writing. The instructor will moderate the conversation, offering context and framing questions.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable.

Led by

Meredith Mann

Meredith Mann

Meredith Mann is the Interim Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts at The New York Public Library, home of the Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers. She is also the curator of “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50,” recently exhibited at The New York Historical and now traveling.

About this series

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Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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