Deidre Bair, biographer of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, and Andrea Dworkin, feminist activist and author, “have a dialogue about what it means to really look at women’s lives in our time.” Bair discusses what it means to be a biographer in general and how she approaches researching and writing about the lives of complicated women. She also discusses her upcoming biography of the controversial French-American writer, Anais Nin. Dworkin, meanwhile, discusses her own writing, including the way she writes about herself and how she approaches fiction. She reflects that, in her experience, “fiction has come out of a supreme emotional imperative–not to confess but to confront.” Bair and Dworkin also discuss the survival of women’s writing and the state of feminist criticism. The discussion is followed by questions from the audience.