This Saturday, 2 p.m., March 28, 2015
Council Chambers
West Hollywood Library
625 N San Vicente Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
This event honors Anais Nin (February 21, 1903—January 14, 1977) the celebrated author and diarist who documented her personal emotional journey in a daily diary that she began at the age of eleven and kept throughout her life. “Anais Nin’s Influence” will present 4 of the female writers she mentored and befriended. Guest speakers include Sas Colby, Valerie Harms, Barbara Kraft, and Tristine Rainer. Hear their views on the legendary Anaïs Nin and listen as they read passages about Nin.
Organizer and City Poet Steven Reigns said of Nin and the event:
“The struggles of life, love, and artistry Nin documented in detail daily. Her life and writings are more relevant now than ever. Hearing firsthand from women who Nin is an exceptional experience.”
Their personal reflections will help form a complete image of the woman with a notoriously dubious recorded past. Her published diaries during her lifetime were dramatically edited for their content, even excluding a husband. Published posthumously her unexpurgated diaries revealed her affair with writer Henry Miller, as well as having an affair with his wife June Miller (documented in the book and movie Henry & June). Later in life Nin was married to two men at the same time, having one husband on each coast – New York and Los Angeles. She also had affairs with two of her therapists, literary critic Edmund Wilson, and her own father when she was thirty and he was in his early fifties. As Edmund Wilson once observed, Nin was both a “practical little Franco-Spanish housewife” and a “lovely little nymph who was not quite a human being.”
Aside from a nontraditional personal life, Nin’s dedication to her diary writing, and publishing is remarkable. In her all-consuming diary she recorded her life-long emotional journey along with portraits of her artist friends, her conversations, travels and struggles as a writer. In the1940s she bought a printing press that she herself operated, self-publishing her own books. With the publication of the first of her expurgated diaries by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1966, Nin became the darling of the college lecture circuit and mentored and advocated numerous young emerging writers. Her correspondence is legendary, as fan letters never went unanswered.
The event is organized and hosted by WEHO City Poet Steven Reigns.
Featured Speakers: Sas Colby, Valerie Harms, Barbara Kraft, Tristine Rainer
Supported by: WEHO Women’s Advisory Board: sponsored by: Pacifica Radio Archives
The post Anais Nin’s Influence: Women Who Knew Nin, On Her Writing, Life & Their Friendship appeared first on World of Wonder.