Barbara Kraft takes on the legacy of one of the 20th century's most enduringly beloved and controversial literary figures in her memoir Anais Nin: The Last Days, which she reads from this afternoon. Known to most for her life among the literary avant-garde of Paris and New York, where she penned extraordinary diaries and erotic novels — as well as her profound and torrid affair with Henry Miller — fewer may know that Nin spent her final years living, and dying, in Silver Lake. Among her closest companions in the two-year battle with cancer that she eventually lost, Nin counted Kraft. Then a young author who benefited from Nin's experience and the character of her presence, Kraft herself came to be a support for the dying legend. Now, decades later, Kraft has authored this book as both a memoir of Nin's least public days and an occasion to revisit her own past and take stock of what shape Nin's influence on her eventually took. Part literary biography, part personal story of care and loss, Kraft's fierce, alternately tender and frank style more than serves the memory of the woman whose diaries we all loved to read. Alias Books East, 3163 Glendale Blvd., Glendale; Sun., Aug. 19, 5 p.m.; free. (323) 661-9000; aliasbookseast.com.

Sun., Aug. 19, 5 p.m., 2012

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