ApprenticedtoVenus Format: Hardback

"Mysterious, glamorous, intellectual . . . with vivid language and lush scenes, this memoir makes for an exciting read." —Bust Magazine. Named a "Best Summer Read" by Elle Magazine!

A Revealing Look at the Mentorship—and Manipulation—of Anaïs Nin

In 1962, eighteen-year-old Tristine Rainer was sent on an errand to Anaïs Nin’s West Village apartment. The chance meeting would change the course of her life and begin her years as Anaïs’s accomplice, keeping her mentor’s confidences—including that of her bigamy—even after Anaïs Nin’s death and the passing of her husbands, until now.

Set in the underground literary worlds of Manhattan and Los Angeles during the sixties and seventies, Tristine charts her coming of age under the guidance of the infamous Anaïs Nin: author of the erotic bestseller Delta of Venus, lover to Henry Miller, Parisian diarist, and feminist icon of the sexual revolution. As an inexperienced college-bound girl from the San Fernando Valley, Tristine was dazzled by the sophisticated bohemian author and sought her instruction in becoming a woman. Tristine became a fixture of Anaïs’s inner circle, implicated in the mysterious author’s daring intrigues—while simultaneously finding her own path through love, lust, and loss.

From personal memories to dramatized scenarios based on Anaïs’s revelations to the author, Apprenticed to Venus blurs the lines between novel and memoir to bring to life a seductive and entertaining character—the pioneer whose mantra was, "A woman has as much right to pleasure as a man!"

Tristine Rainer is a recognized expert on diary and memoir writing and the author of two renowned classics on autobiographic writing continuously in print: The New Diary (with a preface by Anaïs Nin) and Your Life as Story. In addition to co-founding the UCLA Women’s Studies program and later writing and producing award-winning movies for television, Rainer taught memoir and creative nonfiction for eleven years in the USC Masters of Professional Writing Program, and is director of the nonprofit Center for Autobiographic Studies. She resides in California.