ANAIS NIN: A BOOK OF MIRRORS

Now out of print. Shop worn copies available.

Excerpt From the review appearing in the 1997 issue of
Anais: An International Journal:
By Marion Fay

The title of this welcome and much-needed volume, Anais Nin: A Book of Mirrors, is both appropriate and provocative. The mirror concept works because this hefty book of some 420 pages does indeed reflect multiple aspects of Anais Nin as seen by its sixty-five contributors. Moreover, it not only reveals how many readers have seen themselves reflected in her work and in her person, but also the ways in which many of us have been refracted--literally opened-up--and, to use one of her favorite terms, "transmuted" by the experience.

The mirror concept, of course, also carries with it the notion of partial vision, indeed distortion, implications that underlie attacks on Anais Nin by those who despair at her omissions of facts, who focus exclusively on externally manifest behavior.

The seventy-five entries brought together by Paul Herron include essays, scholarly comment, excerpts from literary works and interviews, poems, and personal testimonials, along with photos and illustrations. Most of the contributions reflect favorably upon Anais Nin, but some raise serious questions about her love affairs, duplicities, and the professed incest with her father. Wendy DuBow, for one, who in 1994 edited a volume of interviews with her, points to weaknesses in Nin's thinking and writing, and she makes clear that her interest in Nin is scholarly and sociological, and not governed by any emotional attachment.

The list of those who responded included well-known Nin scholars, such as Sharon Spencer and Suzanne Nalbantian, contributors to this journal, psychologists, non-traditional healers, personal friends, and literary figures like Erica Jong and Allen Ginsberg.

Several early selections speak of visits to Louveciennes, the village that for many readers situates Nin in place and time because of its prominence in the first volume of The Diary of Anais Nin. Jacques G. Lay, the village's honorary deputy mayor, laments that Anais Nin has been "forgotten at home," but celebrates the fact that thousands of visitors from around the world come to Louveciennes "to imbibe the air Anais breathed, the atmosphere she loved."

Several selections in A Book of Mirrors trace the steps of researchers who examined some of the one hundred and fifty bound original diary manuscripts in the Special Collection of the Library at the University of California in Los Angeles. Elyse Lamm Pineau, a professor at Southern Illinois University, unexpectedly came across a cache of audio tapes recording Nin in action, and Elizabeth Podnieks intersperses carefully chosen passages from her own diary with excerpts from Nin's as part of an inquiry into what makes a diary "genuine."

Diane Richard-Allerdyce reveals the evolution of her attitude toward Anais Nin: from glowing adulation--combined with an unwillingness to criticize her--to a reasoned appreciation of Nin's life and work. Discoursing on the writing of her play, "A Literary Soulmate," an excerpt of which appears in the book, Richard-Allerdyce examines Nin's influence on contemporary women who take up writing. The play itself deconstructs the several versions of Nin's "Birth" story and, in doing so, comments on such topics as the conflict between pregnancy and career, which tortures so many women, and on the nature of truth.

Truth-telling, and truth-avoidance in the case of Anais Nin also occupy some other contributors, offering accusations and justifications. In a short essay, Nuria Ribera i Gorriz pushes us to think about the distinction between the intent to deceive (a form of lying) and the intent to protect the self and/or others (a form of half-truth).

The last section of A Book of Mirrors deals with Nin's final days, a sad story, unknown to many of her readers--Barbara Kraft reports on the many hours she spent with Nin as she lingered on the borderline of death. In an excerpt from her manuscript, An Edited Life, Kraft presents Nin in the guise of a character, Maite Lerin, who is experiencing but also reporting on her own dying.

In a brief review one can only suggest the wide range of views, and the variety of modes and styles of expression gathered in this so aptly titled Book of Mirrors. It is not a book to be devoured whole. Rather, it is one to browse and ponder over time. Laden with rewarding insights and warm feelings, it also occasionally asks the reader to enter supernatural zones, where dreams, spirits, and zany coincidences predominate. More than anything, perhaps, A Book of Mirrors once again provides evidence of Anais Nin's extraordinary, and seemingly perpetual, influence on vast numbers of people, no matter what her harshest critics may have to say.

CONTRIBUTORS TO A BOOK OF MIRRORS

Daisy Aldan

Is a poet, novelist, editor, and translator, and has written several volumes of poetry and prose, including The Destruction of Cathedrals, Between High Tides, and The Art and Craft of Fiction. She resides in New York City and was a long-time friend of Anais Nin. A portion of her interview with Anais Nin appeared in Anais: An International Journal, Vol. 6, 1988 and also in Under the Sign of Pisces.

Andrea Andrews

Resides in Royal Oak, Michigan and is a graduate of Wayne State University, Detroit. Intense curiosity about foreign culture, history and the world at large combined with creative impulse led to a vocation in the travel industry. Her eclectic life and world travel experiences have contributed to her distinct opinions, behaviors, and many a good tale to tell.

Britt Arenander

Was born in Stockholm in 1941; since 1968 she has published a number of novels and translated French and English literature into Swedish, including the bulk of Anais Nin’s Diaries. Her book In Search of a Lost World, which is a photographic record of Nin and Miller’s Paris, has been published in Sweden and is being considered for publication in the USA. Her first detective story will soon be published in Germany. Her contribution, the Preface to Lost World, appeared in Anais: An International Journal, Volume 13, 1995.

Bill Arnold

Is a freelance writer who, in addition to writing poetry, has supported literature by establishing the Robert Francis-Bill Arnold collection at the Jones Library in Amherst and the Henry Miller collection at the Amherst College Library. He has written several poems, novels, and non-fiction as well, and among his writings is Aimée’s Secret, a satirical novel based on the life of Henry Miller.

William Ashley

Is a collector of Henry Miller, Black Cat paperbacks and D’Ambrosio. He co-wrote Volume II of Henry Miller: A Bibliography of Primary Sources with Roger Jackson. A native of California, he currently practices radiology on the central coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Rosanne Azarian

Is a dreamer who writes and collaborates with artists in other media. Quote: “Only through the arts can we really touch each other… The mark of our having been here at all will be the dreams we share.” You can find her wherever life sends her, but she prefers the beaches of California or the high mountains of New Mexico.

Maurice Bassett

Is a project-saturated biblio-archaeologist from Burke, Virginia. This natural-born archivist treats the past as his playground, and delights in the expanded sense of reality—what Colin Wilson calls “duo-consciousness”—often provided by reading and research. Bassett is doing a study of the relationship between optimistic expectation and vitality. He has assembled an astonishing collection of Henry Miller’s art since being afflicted with “watercolor mania” in 1992, and is seeking a publisher for his The Selected Letters of Colin Wilson, while working on Completing the Partial Mind: The Letters of Abraham Maslow and Colin Wilson.

Javant Biarujia

Born in Melbourne, Australia, is of mixed Celtic and Mediterranean descent. He is author of several chapbooks of poetry, including Warrior Dolls and Autumn Silks, and has been published widely in Australia and overseas (his work has appeared in The Illinois Review, The James White Revue, nrg, and Tyuonyi in the USA). In 1982, he co-founded the small press Nosukumo, which published Letters to a Friend in Australia by Anais Nin in 1992.

Lili Bita

A Greek-born author and actress, was a close friend of Anais Nin over the last decade of Anais’s life. Anais contributed a preface to Lili’s second poetry collection, Furies, and Lili’s translation of A Spy in the House of Love introduced Anais to the Greek literary public.

Jean Bradford

Professor of Clinical Psychology at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, has been active in the women’s and peace move-ments. She has lectured extensively on Anais Nin and her work and her paper “Venus Rising on the Half Shell—Anais Nin and the Archetypal” was presented at a meeting of the Lawrence Durrell Society in 1994 and an adaptation appeared in Anais: An International Journal, Vol. 13, 1995.

Dolores Brandon

Is a writer, actress, and broadcaster living in New York. As a freelance arts reporter, she is heard on National Public Radio. She is currently engaged in writing a memoir: In the Shadow of Madness.

David Stephen Calonne

Born in Los Angeles, received his B.A. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being (U. of N. Carolina Press: Chapel Hill and London) as well as essays on Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence. He has taught at the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, and is presently Associate Professor of English at Siena Heights College in Michigan.

Richard R. Centing

Was born September 16, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan. He has a B.A. in English from Wayne State University (1961) and an M.L.S. from the University of Michigan (1964). His best paying job in college was in a food warehouse run by Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters. He retired from The Ohio State University Libraries in 1995, where he worked since 1969. Besides Anais Nin scholarship, he was well known as a reviewer of new periodicals. He resides in Columbus, Ohio.

Judith Citrin

Uses her training in energetic healing, consciousness, and spiritual psychologies to facilitate and guide persons on their journey to the Self. She has taught, consulted, and shared her own journey at universities, hospitals, theological seminaries, and adult education and growth centers since 1979. She is in private practice in Wilmette, Illinois, is coordinator of the Spiritual Emergence Network for the midwest, and as an artist has exhibited internationally.

Joseph DeBenedetto

In addition to having poetry and other work published in various magazines, has written articles on Henry Miller, one of which appeared in Stroker, and another in Henry Miller: A Book of Tributes 1931-1994. His contribution to this book is culled from his book Tropic of Cancer Revisited.

Wendy DuBow

After receiving her Ph.D. in English Literature, pursued a freelance writing and editing career for two years. She is now a publications specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. DuBow has published several scholarly articles on Nin as well as a collection of interviews, Conversations with Anais Nin.

Geneviève Eeckaut

Lives in Péronnes-lez-Binche, Belgium, and has written extensively on Anais Nin and Henry Miller. She is an exhibited artist specializing in oils and has been deeply influenced by Vincent Van Gogh.

Marion Fay

Teaches literature at the College of Alameda, California, focusing on women and minority writers. Her article, “Selfhood and Social Conscience—On reading some short stories in Under a Glass Bell,” appeared in Anais: An International Journal, Volume 13, 1995, and was based on a paper delivered at the Nin Conference at Long Island University in 1994.

Noel Riley Fitch

Is the author of Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin (Little Brown, 1993), translated into French, German, and Portuguese, as well as Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (1983), Hemingway in Paris (1989), Literary Cafés of Paris (1989), and “The Literate Passion of Anais Nin and Henry Miller,” in Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (Thames & Hudson, 1994). Fitch lives, as did Nin, in Los Angeles and Paris.

Elmer Gertz

Has been a lawyer for sixty-five years, a law school professor for twenty-five years, and the author of eighteen books and innumerable articles and reviews. He was the attorney for Henry Miller and became his close friend. Their correspondence has been published both in the USA and in Germany.

Allen Ginsberg

Studied at Columbia College, was a copyboy, merchant marine, dishwasher, book reviewer, market researcher, traveled to the Yucatán and Chiapas, the Arctic Sea, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, India and Japan. He wrote Howl in 1956 and Kaddish in 1959, establishing him as one of America’s foremost poets. Other works include Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, The Fall of America, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, and Selected Poems.

Betty Ryan Gordon

Studied drawing and painting in Paris during the 1930s and was Henry Miller’s neighbor at Villa Seurat. She has spent much of her life painting and living in the US, France, and Greece, where she now resides.

Simon Green

Was born in England but has spent most of his adult life between Spain and Paris where he is currently Writer in Residence at George Whitman’s Shakespeare and Company. He is a poet whose works have been performed worldwide from FNAC Paris to Harvard University, a novelist whose work in progress is entitled Bay of Clignancourt. His published volumes include Moths and Hurricanes and The Last Ramparts.

David E. Haberstich

Is Head of Photographic Collections, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Recent publications include “Betty Hahn: The Early Years,” in Betty Hahn: Photography or Maybe Not (University of New Mexico Press, 1995) and “American Photographs in Europe and Illusions of Travel,” in American Photographs in Europe (VU University Press, 1994).

Valerie Harms

Is the author of eight books, most recently Sanctuary: Nature Meditations, The Inner Lover, and The NAS Almanac of the Environment/The Ecology of Everyday Life. She is also an Intensive Journal consultant and plans to be a world traveler.

Michael P. Harris

Custodian of the Michael Fraenkel literary estate and the Carrefour Archives, was led to the work of Henry Miller and his circle by an avid interest in rebellious literature. Friendship with Daphne Fraenkel and important enlightenment grew from this interest and he has since published essays varying from biography, English countryside, history, social commentary and personal philosophy. He is now working with Alycamps Press on a program of publications covering Carrefour and the literary figures associated with it.

Judith Hipskind

Is an authority on palmistry and astrology and is the author of Palmistry, the Whole View. Her article “Reading Hugh Guiler’s Hands” appears in Anais: An International Journal, Volume 11, 1993, her astrological charts for Anais Nin and Hugh Guiler are in Volume 10, 1992, and her article on Eduardo Sanchez is in Volume 9, 1991.

Rochelle Lynn Holt

Has been visited by both Anais Nin and Henry Miller often since their passing but especially around the holidays, for some odd reason. Anais, her mentor, dubbed Rochelle “the Queen of Creativity,” in a personal letter; the crown is still in place. Her books have appeared annually since 1970. Her second poetry-audio, due in 1996, is Riverwoman on Fire (NeWorld Records in Port Charlotte). A Pisces like Anais, she loves the water and waves of Imagination as she dances, paints, sculpts, swims, teaches, walks, and writes eight days a week.

Sheila Holtz

Lives and writes in Belfast, Maine, and her prose and poetry incorporate the themes: sleep/dream/vision/transformation. Her work has appeared in American Writing, Tabula Rasa, Black Bear Review, and other periodicals. She has written material for and performed with Radio Dharana, a Philadelphia-based performance art group.

Roger Jackson

Who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been a practicing school psychologist for the last 23 years. Beginning in 1990, he augmented his interest in the writings of Henry Miller by compiling (along with William Ashley) bibliographic information which culminated in the publication of the two volume set Henry Miller: A Bibliography of Primary Sources.

Ted Joans

Has published thirty-six volumes of poetry, wrote a chapter in Michel Farber’s From Harlem to Paris (University of Illinois Press, 1991) and has written several essays and articles concerning jazz and travel.

Erica Jong

Has authored six novels, including Fear of Flying, and seven volumes of poetry. She has written essays for the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Ms magazine. Her study of Henry Miller, The Devil at Large, appeared in 1993. The essay included in this volume appeared in Anais Nin: An International Journal, Volume 12, 1994, and an abridged version appeared earlier in the London Times Literary Supplement.

Philip and Rose Kaufman

Are the husband and wife team behind the movie Henry & June, and have collaborated on many films. Rose co-wrote 1979’s The Wanderers and has been Philip’s creative partner ever since working as a script supervisor on his first film, Goldstein, in 1963. Included in Philip’s résumé as director are such films as The Body Snatchers, The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Jane Eblen Keller

Teaches at the School of Communications Design at the University of Baltimore and has written several articles about Anais Nin, an overcompensation, she might say, for having abandoned an essay she began in the early 1970s.

Bettina L. Knapp

Is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has written extensively on Jungian psychology and the literary arts, including A Jungian Approach to Literature; Theater and Alchemy; Exile and the Writer; Women in Twentieth-Century Literature; Gérard de Nerval, the Mystic’s Dilemma; Antonin Artaud: A Man of Vision; Anais Nin; Manna and Mystery; etc.

Barbara Kraft

Creator of her own firm, Barbara Kraft Communications and Public Relations, is a Los Angeles-based writer and former reporter and Public Relations, is a Los Angeles-based writer and former reporter for Time magazine. Anais Nin wrote the preface to her first book, The Restless Spirit: Journal of a Gemini. She has written extensively on both Nin and Henry Miller and is currently working on a novel.

Constance Larsen

Is a former psychiatric social worker who earned her M.S.W. at the University of Chicago and practiced in her native Chicago. Her childhood dream of living in Europe incited her wanderlust and moved her to Spain in 1972. Exposure to culture shock gave rise to her career as a writer and Seduction by a Solar Smile was published in London during her twenty-year Iberian residency. In 1993 she returned to the United States and resides in the Midwest.

Jacques Laÿ

Honorary deputy mayor of Louveciennes, was an engineer for Électricité de France until his retirement, after which he, along with his wife Monique, developed a strong interest in the history of their village and its celebrated citizens of the past. The result was Louveciennes Mon Village (1989), in which Anais Nin takes her place alongside Pissarro and Renoir. The Laÿs are noted specialists in impressionism and have collaborated in numerous international expositions, and have presented sound/photomontages in France, England and Germany.

Hank Malone

Is a pyschotherapist and poet with 4 published books, 3 chapbooks, and is anthologized widely, including in Maverick Poets, edited by Steve Kowit. He is looking forward to his correspondence with Charles Bukowski to appear soon with Black Sparrow Press.

Brian Marriner

Was born in London, raised in Birmingham, England and has lived in Yorkshire for the past thirty years. He is author of seven published books including A Splinter of Ice and Forensic Clues to Murder and has contributed to many books and magazines specializing in true crime. He spent 1962-1965 in prison and in 1966 began a close friendship with Colin Wilson.

Deena Metzger

Is a poet, playwright, essayist, and healer and teacher who counsels people with life-threatening diseases and those suffering spiritual, creative and emotional crises. Her work includes Writing For Your Life and Companion to the Inner Worlds (Harper SF), What Dinah Thought (Viking/Penguin), Looking for the Faces of God, and A Sabbath Among the Ruins (Parallax Press, Oakland), as well as The Woman Who Slept With Men To Take The War Out of Them and Tree.

Suzanne Nalbantian

Is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the C. W. Post Center of Long Island University and has recently written Aesthetic Autobiography (St. Martin’s Press 1994), which studies the writings of Anais Nin, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust.

Georgiana Peacher

Is author of Mary Stuart’s Ravishment Descending Time, a TriQuarterly Book, and is currently working on translating the poems and plays of Marina Tsvetaeva. She has read at University of Uppsala, Sweden, and l’Ecole Normale Supériure, France, New York, and soon in Bombay; she is author of Pharoah Hatsheput, a play, and editor and designer of An American Artist in Africa, 1937, Sketch Book and Diary of Wanda Norstrom.

Carol Peirce

Is Professor of English and Communications Design at the University of Baltimore. She is, also, President of the Lawrence Durrell Society and Co-Editor of Deus Loci: the Lawrence Durrell Journal. She has been fascinated by the relationship between Durrell and Anais Nin for a long time and begins, in her contribution to this book, to explore it.

David N. Pepperell

Has contributed articles to Rolling Stone, Nation Review, Juke, and several other rock culture magazines. He has covered major musical tours and has regularly presented programs on public radio. In 1976, he published Raphael Alias and, in 1991, East Gate, West Gate. His contribution to this volume is the introduction to a collection of letters from Anais Nin, Letters to a Friend in Australia, published by Nosukumo (Melbourne, Australia) in 1992.

Elyse Lamm Pineau

Is assistant professor of Speech Communi-cations at Southern Illinois University who has written on the perfor-mance aspects in Anais Nin’s work and has had an article entitled “The Performing Self—On Seduction of the Minotaur” appear in Anais: An International Journal, Vol 12, 1994.

Elizabeth Podnieks

Received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is on the literary diaries of Elizabeth Smart, Antonia White, and Anais Nin. She has presented papers and published articles on Smart, White, and Nin, and on Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Lawrence Durrell, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. She is currently editing the diaries of the modernist American poet and novelist Emily Coleman.

Bern Porter

Helped in the development of television technology, was part of the surrealist movement, was a pioneer in nuclear physics, published avant-garde writers such as Henry Miller, Robert Duncan, and Kenneth Patchen, started an art gallery in Sausalito that showed many of the California abstract painters, and has published his own books of found art, poetry, and artists’ books. Today, he lives in Belfast, Maine, where he runs his Institute of Advanced Thinking, pursuing his ideas and projects concerning the union of “the science molecule and the art molecule.”

Maryanne Raphael

At the suggestion of Anais Nin, studied novel writing with Marguerite Young at the New School for Social Research. Maryanne went on to write such works as Runaways, America’s Lost Youth (Preface by Anais Nin), Raps on Astrology, How to Survive as a Freelance Writer, How to Survive as a New Age Writer, Your Psychic Powers, and her biography Anais Nin: The Voyage Within.

Núria Ribera i Górriz

Is a Catalan writer whose adaptation of her doctoral thesis, “Anais Nin: Writing a Waking Dream,” appeared in Anais: An International Journal, Vol. 12, 1994. She has translated into Catalan Under a Glass Bell, and more recently, Henry and June.

Diane Richard-Allerdyce

Is an Associate Professor of English at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, and wrote her dissertation at the University of Florida about the feminine creativity of Anais Nin. Anais: An International Journal, Vol. 13, 1995, printed an adaptation of part of her book-length study of Nin and the idea of the feminine, which is now being considered for publication.

Joanne Rock

Taught at the University of Louisville and had an adaptation of her Master’s thesis published in Anais: An International Journal, Vol. 13, 1995, entitled “Her Father’s Daughter—A Re-evalu-ation.” Her work include research of Nin’s unexpurgated diaries and writing romance novels.

Jack Saunders

Is a writer living in Florida whose published works include Screed, Evil Genius, and Forty, and has had stories, poems, reviews, and essays appearing in many magazines. Recently released is his Questions About Henry Miller That No One Ever Asked me—With Answers, published by Roger Jackson.

C. J. Scheiner

Has a degree in Molecular Biophysics from Yale University, an M.D. from the State University of New York, and a Ph.D. in Erotology from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. He has collected erotica for over 30 years and has written extensively concerning various aspects of its bibliography. He is one of the foremost book sellers of antiquarian erotica in the world, and is constantly seeking fine erotica in any form to purchase and resell.

Frederick Smock

Is the founding editor of The American Voice, a pan-American literary journal published in Louisville. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Anais, Beaux Arts, American Literary Review, Poet & Critic, and many others. In 1995, he was awarded an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. He teaches at the University of Kentucky, and is a director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Sharon Spencer

Is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. She is a long-time serious student of the writings of Anais Nin, having published more than thirty articles on her work, and a book, Collage of Dreams: The Writings of Anais Nin, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and The Swallow Press (1988). Spencer continues her avid interest and advocacy in Nin’s fiction and is continuing to publish articles on the late author.

Craig Peter Standish

Owner and operator of Standish Books since 1977, has had his poetry and prose published in roughly 350 magazines and newspapers, and has two books (Poor Richard and What the Hell is That?) to his credit. Standish Books has published several titles, including Henry Miller: A Book of Tributes 1931-1994. More!, the companion volume is due in 1996 and unpublished writing by Miller, Hesse, Poe, and many others are in the works.

Irving Stettner

Was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 and during his lifetime spent 5 years in Paris. He edits Stroker magazine, a Poetry-Prose-Art Review, extant since 1974. Books: Thumbing Down to the Riviera, Self-Portrait (Poems), and Beggars in Paradise (Vol. 1 and 2). He is also a watercolorist, with 18 one-man shows to his credit.

Farid Naim Tali

Was born August 18, 1977 in Paris and is studying psychology at Paris V University. He has written poetry and short poetic novels, and is studying both classical and modern dance.

Joan Wells

Lives in Portland, Oregon, and has written for magazines and newspapers, and has a published book, Downwind From Nobody, which appeared in 1978. She has taught at community colleges and has owned and operated a bookshop, but now is feeling desk-bound and eager to write.

Nancy Williamson

Is a psychotherapist and writer who uses diary writing as a tool both in therapy and the teaching of writing skills. She, along with Evelyn Clark and Barbara Reyes, interviewed Anais Nin in 1971; this interview appears in Conversations With Anais Nin, edited by Wendy M. DuBow and published by University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

Lori A. Wood

Studied at Harvard College and the Sorbonne. She holds a degree in Literature from Harvard, where she was the founder of the Women’s Writing Workshop. Wood spent four years as the Director of the Artist Residency Program at Villa Montalvo, working closely with the American Alliance of Artists’ Communities and Res Artis, the International Network of Residential Arts Centres. Currently, she is studying Arabic at the American Language Institute in Fez, Morocco, and working on a collection of short stories.

Robert Zaller

Is the editor of A Casebook on Anais Nin. A critic of American Literature and a scholar of early modern England, he is Professor of History at Drexel University.

Harriet Zinnes

A friend of Anais Nin, and a writer concerning her work, is professor emerita of English of Queens College of CUNY. She is author of six collections of poetry (most recently, My, Haven’t the Flowers Been?), a book of short stories, Lover, a book of art criticism, Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, and a volume of translations of the French poetry of Jacques Prévert, Blood and Feathers. Her six-year-old granddaughter, Anais Zinnes (has she inherited the talents of her namesake?), is the daughter of Zinnes’s son, the Harvard economist, Clifford Zinnes, and Angela de Guerrero.

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