Anaïs Nin is known internationally for her diary, eleven volumes of which have been published. The 35,000 handwritten pages of her journals are currently located in the UCLA library.

Biography:

She was born as Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell in Paris to Cuban parents. Her early years were spent in Cuba and Spain. Her young adulthood was spent in Paris, and she and her husband, Hugo Guiler, moved to the United States in 1939 to avoid World War II. After meeting Rupert Pole in 1947, she engaged in a "bicoastal trapeze" living with him in Los Angeles as a married couple and maintaining her marriage with Guiler in New York.

Anaïs Nin wrote journals prolifically from age eleven until her death. Her journals, many of which were published during her lifetime, detail her private thoughts and personal relationships. Her journals also describe her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole, in addition to her numerous affairs with men and women, including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller, both of whom profoundly influenced Nin and her writing.

In addition to her journals, Nin wrote several novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and volumes of erotic literature. Much of her work, including the collections of erotica, was published posthumously amid renewed critical interest in her life and work.

Nin spent her later life in Los Angeles, California, where she died of cervical cancer in 1977. She was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.