Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I am seeking short (3,500-word) chapters for The Works of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, which will be an edited volume dedicated to Didion and Dunne’s lives in film.

The American couple were a prolific and popular screenwriting team despite being much better known for their respective novels, memoirs, and journalism. Accordingly, the volume will take into account both their produced and many unproduced screenplays—the latter of which are held in Didion and Dunne’s papers at the New York Public Library.

(Didion and Dunne’s life in Hollywood was recently detailed in Alissa Wilkinson’s book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, as well as Dunne’s 1998 memoir Monster: Living Off the Big Screen.)

Most chapters in the book will consider a single film or screenplay. Didion and Dunne’s produced films are: The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Play It as It Lays (1972), A Star Is Born (1976), True Confessions (1981), and Up Close & Personal (1996). Their numerous unproduced screenplays and teleplays include The Deer Park (1984–1986), The Gold Coast (1990), Playland (1987–1997), The Big Clock (1998–2002), and The Set-Up (2002). For a full list of NYPL’s holdings, which contain notes, correspondence, and typescripts pertaining to Didion and Dunne’s film career, please visit https://archives.nypl.org/mss/186276#detailed.

In addition to chapters that are dedicated to particular films, I am also seeking essays that will consider “how they wrote,” which may discuss multiple projects and draw connections from across Didion and Dunne’s shared and respective oeuvres. However, all chapters should include original analysis of the films or screenplays in question and will contextualize these projects within the creators’ lives and times. Reception studies and more theory-driven chapters, particularly those considering gender and sexuality, are welcome too.

If you are interested in contributing, please submit a 250-word abstract and a short author bio to me, Geoffrey Lokke, at gl2493@columbia.edu. Contributors may be scholars or film professionals. Bloomsbury Academic has expressed interest in the volume, which would be my second collection for Bloomsbury’s Screen Storytellers Series. Please submit all proposals by March 27, 2026.

For more information or to propose a volume for Bloomsbury's Screen Storytellers series, please contact Anna Weinstein, series editor, at aweinst6@kennesaw.edu.