Henry Alford is a humorist and journalist who has written for The New Yorker for more than two decades. A former columnist for The New York Times and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, he is the author of six books, including And Then We Danced, How to Live, and Big Kiss, an account of his attempts to become a working actor, which won a Thurber Prize.
"“I came for Henry and stayed for Joni. Which is to say, one can have almost no interest at all in Joni Mitchell (and I'm ashamed to say I was one of those cultural lunks) and enjoy the crap out of this book — the gorgeous turn of words, the humor, the tireless pursuit of delicious detail. Alford, long a favorite of mine, captures the artist in all her zesty contradictions. He doesn't seek to resolve them, to draft some overarching theory of Joni, but rather to simply — as he puts it — 'spill them out on a tabletop and watch them sparkle.' That they do."" –Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff and Fuzz ""Henry Alford gathered everything there is to know about Joni Mitchell and then distilled it all into the most fascinating, entertaining and significant stories. Like its subject, I Dream of Joni is artful and inventive. Alford leaps from decade to decade, backwards and forwards, making the reader a (happy) captive on a carousel of time. The result is exactly what a genius like Joni Mitchell deserves—a biography that feels unfettered and alive."" —Nell Scovell, author of Just the Funny Parts ""Having read Henry Alford’s dreamy meditations and investigations into Joni Mitchell, I realize that all those hundreds of hours lying prone on my green shag carpet listening to Court and Spark in high school did not make me the Mitchellologist I thought I was. I am so glad Henry Alford filled in many of her mysteries. He even went to Saskatchewan; God’s work."" —Lisa Birnbach, author of New York Times bestsellers The Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep"