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Joan Didion cancels April L.A. appearance

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Joan Didion, who was scheduled to appear April 14 at UCLA Live, has canceled her visit, it was announced Tuesday. In an email, UCLA Live wrote that the cancellation was ‘due to injury.’

[Updated, 5:30 p.m. March 20: Her publisher, Knopf, has confirmed that Didion fractured her patella. She was at lunch and ‘banged her leg,’ said Paul Bogaards, Knopf’s executive director of publicity and marketing. She is wearing a brace and was advised by her doctor to take it easy.]

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Didion’s nonfiction writing includes the National Book Award-winning ‘The Year of Magical Thinking,’ 2011’s ‘Blue Nights,’ and the seminal essay collections ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and ‘The White Album.’ Her novels include ‘Play It As It Lays,’ set it in Los Angeles, and ‘Run, River,’ set near her hometown, Sacramento. Didion, 77, lives in New York.

In February of last year, Didion broke her collarbone in a fall, canceling a speaking appearance in Minnesota. ‘Maybe if I hadn’t made myself so tired, I would have not gotten so physically worn down,’ she told David Ulin in October, discussing the stresses -- and necessity -- of going on a book tour:

I’ve been trying to fight my way through this because of the book tour. I don’t actually want to do the book tour, because it’s tiring and ... it’s a book tour. Then I keep thinking: If you didn’t go on the book tour, you would have failed, and so this question of doing the thing -- going to the airport, getting on the airplane, going to Toronto, where you don’t want to go ever in your whole life -- is on some level necessary. Otherwise you have failed yourself.

UCLA Live ticket holders are instructed to seek refunds from their point of purchase.

Update: information about Didion’s injury has been added.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

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