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SAN FRANCISCO - At the crossroads of memory and myth, California emerges as both dream and enigma in the legacy of Joan Didion. This compelling event explores the state's shifting identity through literature, personal narrative, and cultural critique. Author Benedetta Faedi revisits Didion’s vision, tracing landscapes of ambition, loss, and contradiction. In conversation with Sara Marinelli, the discussion opens new perspectives on a place that continues to shape global imagination. A journey into California’s soul begins here.
In California with Joan Didion
In California with Joan Didion. Event date: From May 07 2026, 18:30 To May 07 2026, 20:30. Place: 710 Sansome St, San Francisco. For a fee: no. In California with Joan Didion: Horizons, Fears and Abysses along the West Coast. Book presentation with author Benedetta Faedi in conversation with Sara Marinelli. Thursday, May 7 - 6:30 PM. This presentation is in English. Free Admission - Registration required: Italian Cultural Institute San Francisco.
Joan Didion’s Early Voice
On a June morning in 1948, an eighth-grade girl delivers her graduation speech to a sweltering audience at her school in Sacramento. Her name is Joan Didion. She is wearing a new dress of pale organza, green as the brief spring days when the wheat comes up. A crystal pendant at her throat wards off the heat. The speech is titled Our California Heritage, and it is the first of many works Joan will write about her land.
A Fifth-Generation Californian
A fifth-generation Californian, Didion was born in Sacramento and spent most of her life in the state. She learned to swim in the Sacramento River before the dams, and to drive along its banks. And yet California remained impenetrable to her — a mystery whose contrasts, ambiguities, and contradictions she would spend a lifetime trying to explore.
Benedetta Faedi’s Perspective
Benedetta Faedi, a Californian by adoption, retraces this relentless search for understanding through Didion’s work, making it her own and weaving it into her story. It is a journey that unfolds across valleys and deserts, cliffs and oceans — touching on questions from that era that remain urgent today: the California dream, the promises and illusions of innovation, gender discrimination, the abyss of loss, and the color of endings.
About Benedetta Faedi
Benedetta Faedi is an Italian author and professor. She holds a doctorate from Stanford University and was a Fulbright Scholar at Kyoto University (2024–2025), where she researched gender equality in Japan. She is the author of In California with Joan Didion (Giulio Perrone, 2025), as well as several picture books, including Una (2025), Coriandoli (2023), and Insieme e Uguali: la battaglia di Linda Brown contro il razzismo (2024). Her short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she contributes to Limina and Nazione Indiana. In English, she has published books on gender and children’s rights with Oxford University Press and Rutgers University Press, alongside numerous articles on gender discrimination and violence. She teaches at the university and lives in San Francisco.
About Sara Marinelli
Sara Marinelli is a San Francisco–based writer who grew up in Naples, Italy. Her writing in English is published in Chicago Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA online, New American Writing, and Blue Mesa Review; her work in Italian appears in Nazione Indiana, Leggendaria, Alias. A recipient of the 2024–2025 Brown-Handler residency at the San Francisco Public Library, Sara is a Teaching Artist at the San Francisco Opera and an award-winning educator at the University of San Francisco, where she teaches Comparative Literature and Creative Writing.
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