There was no one like her: an idol of New Journalism, a master chronicler of 1960s counterculture and one of the only people who should ever write about the majesty of California — prolific American icon Joan Didion has died of Parkinson’s disease in her Manhattan home. She was 87 years old. 

Who else could make Hollywood and Haight-Ashbury carousing seem so simultaneously glamorous and disorderly? Her novels, like Play It As It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer, helped define modern American fiction. Her essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album did the same for non-fiction and American journalism. She had the courage to work out grief on the page: The Year of Magical Thinking articulates the anguish of loss (her husband died of a heart attack in 2003) with impeccable kindness and wisdom. Ultimately, it will help writers and readers process Didion’s own death.

Learn all about Didion or reacquaint yourself with her storied life and literary gifts by streaming the 2017 Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. Directed by her nephew, actor-filmmaker Griffin Dunne, the documentary is a balmy celebration of Didion, covering her entire life, made with the warmth and care only a loved one could bring to such a project. It is a gorgeous remembrance of her prose and persona – and there is no better time than now to watch it.