The Anaïs Nin Foundation and Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal are pleased to announce the inaugural Anaïs Nin Essay Prize. We are seeking submissions of scholarly essays centered on the work, influence, relationships, or legacy of Anaïs Nin. Essays should aim to extend the academic conversation around her contributions to literature, art, and culture.

Poetry is the translator and the output. It is the heart of the matter. It is the unsaid things in written form.

Ammoniac is a wonderfully written book. There is no fancy writing here just a gritty, raw and uncensored version of our protagonist. Its dystopian tone rides nicely along with this marriage of humour and darkness. To add to this, it feels unequivocally British - the lingo, the language. I do not feel so far away from knowing someone like him, its familiarity is weirdly comforting.

Losing David Lynch left a huge void. He was a man that many of us didn’t get to meet yet he touched our lives, our creative practices and allowed us to feel cinema so deeply it would imprint itself on us - Lynch became part of the fabric of our being. His impact on me has been beyond anything I can put into this tribute. It has been both profound and influential.

Henry Miller described George Turner as one of ‘the hundred or so’ of Anaïs Nin’s lovers he never got to meet.  He was an American business acquaintance of her husband Hugh Guiler who was infatuated with her.  They first met in the late 1920s when they danced together and she was charmed by him.

Oastar has a deeply cyclical feel to it. There is deep movement with each track and the record as a whole – an invocation, a shedding and a regrowth that endeavours and achieves to come full circle, back to its original form. It is much more than just an album, it is a sensation that buries itself deep within you and embeds itself into your psyche.

Looking to untangle the inner struggle I was experiencing, I turned to the one thing i could trust, my dreams and runes. I began recording my dreams. On the first night I was gifted a powerful symbol as a clue. On the second night I saw Odin walking around my bed…

The colour blue acts as a trapeze between the real world and the dreamworld. It reveals to us how the characters exist in that liminal space. 

A photo essay on the use of the colour blue within David Lynch films.

Poetry always came first - then fiction. Bukowski was the lynch pin that allowed me to link these up using a free flowing conversational style, a style I never knew existed - a style I would use for the rest of my life. It also linked up my two loves – the spirit of rock and roll and literature.

Each record represents another candle lit and another candle snuffed through ritual and A Diadem of Fire is no different. However, this EP feels deeper, guttural and more connected with our earthly senses - pushing us towards the world of magick - more than ever before.

I stare at the blank page, the blank digital page on my laptop and feel its threatening white glow upon my skin. I sit with my notebook and feel nothing but an invite to fill its pages. I am uninterrupted by AI help, suggestions for corrections and the pinging of emails and new alerts. Even the whirring of my laptop annoys me.

Mark Youd lives and works in an old farmhouse near Glasgow. He trained as a draughtsman and, following a successful career as a designer and technical illustrator, Mark developed his personal artistic practice; exploring psychology through portraiture.  

Synchronicity: “Meaningful coincidences” — events that occur together without logical or causal connection, yet are perceived as deeply significant by the observer.

Looking back, that night was destined to be a powerful one. It was November 2, right in the middle of Scorpio season.  It was the Day of the Dead, and we had pictures of our deceased loved ones and ofrendas across the living room. The veil was thin. Out there in the cosmos, warrior Mars was opposing lord Pluto. Powerful energies lingered in the air. 

My paintings begin in silence and shadow. In the quiet of my studio I often feel a presence – an ancient voice or a child’s laugh – that begins to paint itself through me. I sit with a canvas and let my hand move, guided by instinct: a shape appears, a creature stirs, a moon or mountain takes form…