John D’Agata teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. His new book, About a Mountain, will be published next month by Norton.

• January 2010: What Happens There
  A chronicle of suicide, longing, silence, and what’s not announced by the epic signage of Las Vegas.
• FULL TEXT
  October 2003: Joan Didion’s Formal Experience of Confusion
  Some memoirists hide behind their crisply recollected facts; Joan Didion offers herself unadorned, confused and blurry, and struggling to remember.