How David Yaffe Earned Joni Mitchell’s Trust

David Yaffe, assistant professor at the College of Arts and Sciences, recently released a biography on Joni Mitchell, which featured unparalleled access to her private life.  In a feature for the Dallas Morning News, Yaffe talked about how he was able to get this close to the star.

“During the conversation, she happened to say: ‘Man, I need a biographer.’ She had recently been rear-ended by a teenage driver, an event that underscored the fragility of life and put her desire to have a worthy tome written about her in even sharper relief. Yaffe was thrilled to hear it, because he was already making plans to write her definitive biography,” the article says.