Joan Didion received the 2002 Saint Louis University Literary Award from the Library Associates in a well-attended ceremony held Oct. 1 in Anheuser-Busch Auditorium.

This is the 35th year the award has been given by the Library Associates, a group dedicated to enriching the cultural life of the area, and providing financial help to the University’s libraries.

Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel laureates and other distinguished writers from the United States and abroad have come to St. Louis to receive the honor and address members of the community. Past recipients include Tennessee Williams (1974), John Updike (1987), Tom Wolfe (1990) and Simon Schama (2001).

Eileen McLoughlin, president of Library Associates, gave a welcome.

“Each year it is the Library Associates’ privilege to honor a leading writer in our time,” McLoughlin said.

Harold K. Bush, Jr., Ph.D., assistant professor of English at SLU, introduced Didion.

“Among Joan’s many gifts, I believe, are the gifts of a clear and vital language, of extremely intense observation,” Bush said.

In her acceptance response, Didion read aloud excerpts from the novel she is currently writing. The novel details her family’s history and migration to California. She then fielded questions from the audience.

Didion was born in Sacramento, Calif. and graduated with a B.A. from the University of California-Berkeley. She began writing as an undergraduate and has since explored many types and styles of writing.

She is the author of a number of novels, including Run River, Play It As It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted.

Her non-fiction work includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry and her recent collection of essays, Political Fiction.

Didion currently lives in New York City with her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Together they have co-authored a number of screenplays, including The Panic in Needle Park, Play it as it Lays and Up Close and Personal.

She is a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. She also lectured at UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Yale and Columbia.

Among Didion’s awards are the 1996 Edward McDowell Medal and the 1999 Columbia Journalism Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Berkeley Fellows and the Council of Foreign Relations.

Along with honoring Didion, Sara van den Berg, Ph.D., chair of the English department, formally presented the Walter J. Ong, S.J. Award to Jeffrey Schwarz, an English doctoral student currently working on his dissertation.

The Ong Award is named in honor of Walter Ong, S.J., a professor emeritus of humanities in English. This award is presented annually to a student in the Ph.D. program who has passed both oral and written comprehensive exams.