HEXENTEXTE - The Labyrinth: A Conversation on Anaïs Nin with Amanda Maciel Antunes & Katie Doherty

This a video recording of our conversation where we took Nin’s short story The Labyrinth, published in Under a Glass Bell (1948) to discuss Antunes and Doherty’s research and responses to Nin’s work with a focus on dreamlife, personal narrative, and pathways through the creative process.

Amanda Maciel Antunes (aka dama) is a self-taught Brazilian artist of indigenous South American and Portuguese descent based in Los Angeles. Her transdisciplinary practice merges language and durational performance to create paintings, writing, photography, sculpture, sound, video and installation. She works in collaboration with public libraries, nature and communal spaces, reflecting on the selective nature of memory, inherent language and anthropological references as points of departure. Her first book titled Second Birth was published in the Spring of 2023 by HEXENTEXTE. She’s also a librarian at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles and operator/co-founder of Nasty Women LA.

As well as being published by Sky Blue Press (A Cafe in Space: The Anaïs Nin Literary Journal), Katie's work has been included in three anthologies of her own poetry published by independent presses, as well as anthologies from East London Press and Tangerine Press. Her work is deeply rooted in memory, dreams, liminal spaces, and symbolism.

Founded by UK-based writer Katie Doherty, Black Flowers is an online creative platform and press.

HEXENTEXTE is a Los Angeles-based feminist project dedicated to the research, presentation, and publication of works at the intersection of image, text, and the body. HEXENTEXTE borrows her name from Unica Zurn’s book of anagrammatic poems and automatic drawings.