Joan Acocella (1945-2024)

Joan Acocella was a staff writer for the New Yorker, where she reviewed dance and books. Her books include Mark Morris, a critical biography of the choreographer; Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism; and Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder. She edited the first unexpurgated edition of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky and, with Lynn Garafola, she edited André Levinson on Dance. Her collection of essays Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints (2007) was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism, and it won the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Acocella also received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research from the Congress of Research on Dance, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. Before going to the New Yorker, Acocella wrote for the New York Review of Books, Art in America, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Village Voice, and other journals. She was a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the New York Institute of the Humanities.