A Woman Speaks
by Anaïs Nin
The lecture years on the page: creativity, women, and the examined life, gathered from the talks that made her a campus phenomenon.
- 1975
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeAfter 1966, Nin's most public work was spoken: the lecture halls, seminars, and interviews where a generation — young women above all — came with the Diary in hand and questions about how to live. A Woman Speaks, edited from tapes and transcripts by the scholar Evelyn J. Hinz and published by Swallow Press in 1975, distills those years: talks on creativity, the diary practice, relationships, and the will to self-making, in the direct spoken voice her books kept literary. It became one of her most read titles. (Talks — nothing to spoil.)
The story, in more detail
The lecture circuit was Nin's real late-life genre. She was on the road for a decade — campuses, conferences, television — and the spoken Nin surprised people: warmer and funnier than the legend, patient with enormous audiences of the young, and expert at turning the questions of the moment (the women's movement most of all) back toward her lifelong subjects of inner growth and creative discipline. Her relationship to feminism was genuinely complicated — she was claimed and criticized by it in the same seasons — and the talks here show her negotiating that embrace in real time.
Evelyn J. Hinz, her chosen critic, assembled the book from recordings with Nin's cooperation, organizing by theme rather than chronology. Published in 1975, it caught the last years of her speaking life and outlived them; for many readers it remains the most approachable Nin — the doctrine of the diaries and essays, delivered conversationally, with the audience in the room.
What's inside
Edited talks and exchanges grouped by theme: the diary as a discipline of self-creation; creativity and the refusal of despair; women's development and the movement's questions, answered in her own key; relationships, dreams, and the psychology of growth; and the question-and-answer sessions where the era's audiences met her directly. Hinz's arrangement keeps the spoken cadence — the book reads as an evening with the late Nin.
Themes and analysis
The audience enters the conversation
Nin's language for creative will combines reassurance with pressure. In passages from A Woman Speaks quoted by Sandra Rehme, it can pursue an artist as well as provide an inner point of stability. The two images pull in different directions: one suggests being driven, the other finding one's bearings. Their coexistence makes creativity less comfortable than a simple promise of self-expression. The same force that unsettles the artist can help organize a life. Rehme's discussion draws attention to the tension between this conflict and Nin's preference for an eventual synthesis.
The spoken voice becomes a book
The apparent immediacy of the collection has an editorial history. In a July 1974 letter to Moira Collins, Nin says that Hinz has assembled the lectures but that she herself must revise their wording. This small distinction makes the book more than a passive record of speech. Selection belongs to one stage of its making; the speaker's return to her sentences belongs to another. Its conversational voice can therefore be read as something carried into print through work, rather than as a guarantee that every phrase reproduces an untouched recording.
Why we recommend it
The voice
Warmer and funnier than the books' legend — the spoken register her audiences fell for.
The era in the room
The women's movement's questions and her answers, recorded live rather than reconstructed.
The doctrine, portable
Diary practice, creativity, self-making — the whole program in an evening's reading.
What this book explores
Timeline
1966–1975
The lecture decade: campuses, seminars, and interviews across America, taped as she went.
July 1974
Nin tells Moira Collins that she is revising the wording of the lectures Evelyn Hinz is assembling.
1975
Swallow publishes Hinz's edited collection, two years before Nin's death.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Swallow Press
- 1975
Paperback
- Paperback
- Swallow Press / Ohio University Press
Reader reviews
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A Woman Speaks: frequently asked questions
What is A Woman Speaks?
A collection of Anaïs Nin's lectures, seminars, and interviews from her post-Diary fame, edited from recordings by Evelyn J. Hinz and published by Swallow Press in 1975.
Did Nin write it?
She spoke it. Hinz edited the talks and exchanges from tapes and transcripts with Nin's cooperation, organizing them by theme.
What does she talk about?
The diary as a discipline, creativity and growth, women's development and the questions of the women's movement, relationships, and dreams — with live question-and-answer throughout.
Was Nin a feminist?
Complicatedly. The movement claimed her and criticized her in the same years; these talks show her welcoming the audience while insisting on her own vocabulary of inner growth over politics.
Is it a good introduction to Nin?
One of the best — the ideas of the diaries and essays in her most direct, conversational register.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document A Woman Speaks, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1A Woman Speaks
NovelAnaïs Nin, 1975Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Anaïs Nin — biography
WebsiteThe Anaïs Nin FoundationUsed forUsed to verify A Woman Speaks's bibliographic context and its place within Anaïs Nin's published work.
3Anaïs Nin Papers — diary, March–September 1938
ArchiveUCLA Library Special CollectionsUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Anaïs Nin and A Woman Speaks.
4Anaïs Nin: A Biography
BiographyG. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995Used forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which A Woman Speaks appeared.
5Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin
BiographyLittle, Brown, 1993Used forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on A Woman Speaks and Anaïs Nin's wider career.
6Anaïs Nin — letter of July 15, 1974
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the A Woman Speaks page.
7The Multimedia of Our Unconscious Life: Anaïs Nin and the Synthesis of the Arts — doctoral thesis
WebsiteUniversity College London, 2013Used forPrinted p. 279 and footnotes 149–150, quoting A Woman Speaks p. 2; surrounding pp. 278–280 read for context. A quotation-based reading, not a complete primary edition.
8Letter to Moira Collins, July 15, 1974 — public transcription
WebsiteThinking of Anais Nin, 1974Used forThe site's transcription of Nin's July 15, 1974 letter, specifically her distinction between Hinz's assembly and her own wording revisions; not a manuscript facsimile or full transcript comparison.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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