Conversations with Anaïs Nin

Largely ignored by mainstream audiences for the first thirty years of her career, Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) finally came into her own with the publication of the first part of her diary in 1966. Thereafter she was catapulted into fame. Throughout the late sixties and the seventies she attracted a host of devoted and admiring readers in the counterculture, who were magnetized by her personal liberation and openness. For a woman to make such a probing exploration of the intimate recesses of her psyche made her a cult figure with a large and lasting readership. Born in France, she came to America in the thirties. Her liaison with Henry Miller and his wife June, documented in her explicitly detailed diaries, became the subject of a major film of the nineties. Nin's forthright books such as Delta of Venus, her diaries that continue to be published in a steady flow, and her charismatic charm made her the subject of many candid interviews, such as those collected here. Eight included in this volume are printed for the first time. Many others were originally published in magazines that are now defunct. Nin elaborates on subjects only touched upon in the diaries, and she speaks also of her role in the women's movement and of her philosophies on art, writing, and individual growth.