About the Artist

D.J. Waldie: Biography

D. J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996 and 2005), Real City: Downtown Los Angeles Inside/Out (2001), Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (2004), and Close to Home: An American Album (2004).

Holy Land received the California Book Award for nonfiction in 1996. In 2004, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

D. J. Waldie is a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

Selections from Holy Land were included in the Library of America anthology Writing from Los Angeles in 2003 and in the California Council for the Humanities anthology California Uncovered in 2005. He was included in the California Arts Council anthology My California in 2004.

D. J. Waldie has been the Public Information Officer of the city of Lakewood since 1978. He lives a not-quite-middle-class life in Lakewood, in the house his parents bought in 1946.