I am a fifth-generation Californian. Born in Sacramento and raised in the great central plain of California, an area I often describe nostalgically in my work. As an undergraduate English major at the University of California, Berkeley, I won an essay prize sponsored by Vogue magazine. As a result, Vogue hired me, and for eight years I lived in New York City, while I rose to associate features editor. I published my first novel, Run River, in 1963, and in the same year I married the writer John Gregory Dunne. In 1964 we returned to California, where we remained for twenty-five years.
Although I wrote four more novels, my reputation rests on my essays collected as Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979).
