Alissa Wilkinson is a critic at the New York Times. Her book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, was published by Liveright on March 11, 2025. She teaches creative nonfiction in NYU’s XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement M.A. program. Alissa has been writing criticism since 2005, and her work has appeared in Vox, the NYT Book Review, Vulture, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Los Angeles Review of Books, RogerEbert.com, Books & Culture, and many more. Her previous book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking and Living from Revolutionary Women, was published by Broadleaf in 2022. She earned an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University.