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Diane Johnson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Diane Lain (1934-04-28)April 28, 1934 (age 90) Moline, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | Stephens College (BA) |
| Genres | Fiction,satire,essays,screenwriting |
| Notable awards | American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999 |
| Spouse | Lamar Johnson (1953–1960s) |
| Children | 4 |
Diane Johnson (bornDiane Lain, April 28, 1934) is an Americannovelist andessayist whosesatirical novels often feature American heroines living in contemporary France. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novelPersian Nights in 1988.
In addition to her literary works, she is also known for writing the screenplay of the 1980 filmThe Shining together with its director and producerStanley Kubrick.
Diane Lain was born inMoline,Illinois. She is the author ofLulu in Marrakech (2008),L'Affaire (2003),Le Mariage (2000), andLe Divorce (1997), among other works, both fictional and non-fictional. She was aNational Book Award finalist and the winner of theCalifornia Book Award gold medal for "Le Divorce." Her memoirFlyover Lives was released in January 2014.
She has been a frequent contributor toThe New York Review of Books since the mid-1970s. With filmmakerStanley Kubrick, Johnson co-authored the screenplay toThe Shining (1980), adapted from thehorrornovel of the same name byStephen King.[1]
In 2003,Le Divorce, a film adaptation of her 1997comedy of mannersnovel of the same name, was released, directed byJames Ivory and starredKate Hudson andNaomi Watts.[2]
Johnson attendedStephens College, a small women's college in Missouri. In her sophomore year, she entered theMademoiselle magazine Guest Editor contest and was selected as one of 20 women from across the United States to work on the magazine for a month in New York City in 1953. The month at the magazine would prove to be formative in her eventual career as a writer. Another member of the group wasSylvia Plath who would write about the experience in her 1963 novelThe Bell Jar.
Johnson shadowed the Health and Beauty editor and was responsible for answering readers' questions about makeup. In a piece she wrote for the September 2003 edition ofVogue magazine, Johnson said: "I still have a strong memory of Plath's white straw beret, her blonde pageboy and cheerful face. (None of us understood the anguish of her secret life, though maybe the editors did, for they treated her carefully, the one most destined to succeed.)"
In theVogue article, Johnson wrote the month atMademoiselle and her exposure to Plath taught her a key lesson. "I realized that if you took pains with your writing, you could make art, and that the rather facile little stories I had dashed off for my English classes or the school magazine were probably not art. It was, in fact, the example of "Sunday at the Mintons'," Sylvia Plath's winning story in the Guest Editor contest, that made that point to me and changed my life, though not immediately."
Johnson went on to say, "Writing was a serious form of work, and to be serious, like those New York editors, you had to send in your stories. Writers and editors were embarked on a consequential enterprise, the business of literature and books. What happiness to have been taught that lesson; I did send in my novels."
That same year, 1953, Johnson married B. Lamar Johnson Jr. Within eight years, she had given birth to four children with him: Kevin, Darcy, Amanda, and Simon. In theVogue article she wrote, "Novel-writing would become my refuge during moments snatched during their naps and play visits. New York...came to symbolize a road not taken, but I was not sorry, exactly, for if I had stayed in New York, I probably would not have done my writing."
After separating from and divorcing Johnson, in 1968 she marriedJohn F. Murray, a physician who became chief of pulmonary and critical care atSan Francisco General Hospital. After Murray's retirement, the two divided their time between homes inParis, where Murray died ofCOVID-19 on March 24, 2020, at the age of 92, and San Francisco.[3]
