Conversations with Anaïs Nin
by Anaïs Nin
The interviews, collected: three decades of Nin answering questions, from little magazines to the fame years, in one scholarly volume.
- 1994
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA posthumous gathering of Nin's interviews, edited by Wendy M. DuBow for the University Press of Mississippi's Literary Conversations series in 1994: conversations spanning her American decades, from small-journal exchanges before the fame through the campus and media years after 1966. The format's virtue is the unguarded middle ground — less composed than the essays, more focused than the lectures — with interviewers pressing on the diary, the fiction's reception, women and the movement, and the legend she was living inside. (Interviews — nothing to spoil.)
The story, in more detail
The Literary Conversations series collects interviews whole rather than in quotation, and the treatment suits Nin unusually well: she was interviewed constantly and answered seriously, and the run of full conversations shows the themes hardening into doctrine and occasionally cracking under a good question. DuBow's selection spans the arc — obscurity, arrival, icon — and the introduction places each conversation in its moment.
For readers who know A Woman Speaks, this is the other half of the spoken record: not the lecture platform she controlled but the exchanges she didn't, including interviewers skeptical of the diary project and of the persona. The result is among the most useful single volumes for seeing how Nin explained herself to her century — and where the explanations shifted.
What's inside
Full-text interviews across roughly three decades, arranged chronologically with an editor's introduction: the early exchanges in little magazines, the post-1966 wave of campus, radio, and print conversations, and late interviews from the final years. Recurring ground — the diary and its editing, the fiction's long fight for readers, psychoanalysis, women's lives and the movement — with each interviewer's angle preserved.
Why we recommend it
The interview arc
Obscurity to icon in the same format — the persona's development, datable conversation by conversation.
The good questions
The volume keeps the pressing interviewers, and her answers under pressure are the book's best material.
Reference-grade
Full texts, chronology, and context — built for citation as much as reading.
What this book explores
Timeline
1940s–1970s
The interviews accumulate, from little-magazine exchanges to the post-1966 media wave.
1994
DuBow's collection prints them whole for the Literary Conversations series.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- University Press of Mississippi
- 1994
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
Conversations with Anaïs Nin: frequently asked questions
What is Conversations with Anaïs Nin?
A 1994 collection of Nin's interviews across three decades, edited by Wendy M. DuBow for the University Press of Mississippi's Literary Conversations series.
Did Nin write or authorize it?
No — it is a posthumous scholarly collection, published seventeen years after her death, printing the interviews in full with an editor's introduction.
What do the interviews cover?
The diary and its editing, the fiction's reception, psychoanalysis, women and the movement, and the fame itself — with each interviewer's own angle preserved.
How does it differ from A Woman Speaks?
A Woman Speaks collects her lectures and seminars — the platform she ran. This volume collects interviews, including skeptical ones, where the questions came from outside.
Who should read it?
Readers past the introductions — it rewards those who know the diaries and want to watch the self-presentation evolve under questioning.