Lena Dunham Drops Surprise New Book, Donates All Proceeds to Girls Write Now Organization
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By Maia Efrem May 17, 2016
Mere days after her 30th birthday, Lena Dunham has dropped a new book, “Is It Evil Not to Be Sure?” with all proceeds going to the New York City-based nonprofit Girls Write Now.
The book is comprised of Dunham’s diary entries from 2005-2006, or as the synopsis of the book describes it, “Creative Snippets and Observations Journal…. It is a candid, chaotic, and occasionally poetic snapshot of a young person becoming an adult.”
Announcing the release of the book in Tuesday’s Lenny Letter, Dunham emphasized the importance of Girls Write Now, a mentoring organization that empowers young women writers. “We need to remind every young woman, no matter their socioeconomic reality, that their stories are essential to our future,” she wrote. “We can’t live without them, and we also don’t want to.”
Speaking exclusively to BuzzFeed about her decision to publish the diary, Dunham said it all began when she was recuperating from surgery earlier this year. “I found my journals from 2005/2006 on an old hard drive. I was, of course, full of the kind of mortification that is part and parcel with meeting a former version of yourself…. But I was also moved by- maybe even proud of- how carefully I had recorded that period of time, my younger self’s commitment to capturing the kinds of hyper-internal formative moments so often lost to adulthood,” she said, adding “I can’t think of a more admirable goal for an organization, or a better reason to expose the oft troubling thought patterns of my final teenage year.”
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