Lena Dunham attends a special screening of Fox Searchlight Pictures' "Dom Hemingway" on Thursday, March 27, 2014, in New York. Dunham will read excerpts from her new memoir "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's Learned" on Saturday at the Just For Laughs 42 festival in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Evan Agostini

TORONTO - When Lena Dunham first pitched an idea to television executives for a show centred on the lives of four young women in New York City, she was met with puzzlement and condescension.

"They were like, 'You know that thing when girls live together and they suddenly all get their periods at the same time?' I was like, 'No, I don't know that thing, and even if it were true, there's other stuff I'm worrying about that I'd rather write about,'" Dunham recalls with a laugh in a recent phone interview.

"I remember one guy saying a lot that he wanted me to write about that 'special time' in a woman's life. I was like, 'Do you mean puberty? Do you mean menopause? Do you mean pregnancy?' I mean, I just couldn't begin to understand."

Thankfully, Dunham found a home on HBO and now "Girls," an unflinching look at the desires and humiliations of a quartet of twenty-somethings, is set to enter a fourth season. After skyrocketing to fame as its creator and star, Dunham has turned her gaze inward to produce a new collection of personal essays.

She will debut "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned'" at Just for Laughs 42 in Toronto on Saturday. During an on-stage conversation with CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi, she will read excerpts from the much-anticipated memoir.

Spanning her life from early childhood to present day, the book explores topics like her obsessive health fears, awkward sexual encounters "where you keep your sneakers on," being naked on TV, and of course, what it was like to prove herself in a meeting of 50-year-old male executives.

Dunham, 28, says she conceives of the book as an "exploration of femininity and feminism as it stands for young women, but through a very personal lens." She hopes by sharing her own missteps, she can help others avoid doing the same.

"I always wanted it to feel like everything, every mistake that I made, was grist for the mill. I think for me the most valuable lesson to impart from the book is that even all this wandering, all this searching, all this stuff that feels like useless garbage will ultimately fuel either your work or teach you to be in a more healthy and positive relationship," she says. "It all has a place in your life and it can all enrich and nurture you if you let it."

It's hard not to hear echoes of Hannah Horvath in Dunham's voice as she talks about mining her personal life for stories. After all, Hannah is an aspiring essayist who declares in the first episode of "Girls" that she could be "the voice of her generation, or at least, a voice of a generation."

Dunham says it will be interesting to see whether people can read her essays without thinking of Hannah's oversized ambitions when the book hits shelves Sept. 30.

"There are a lot of similarities between Hannah and me. I'm no method actress, so it's not a far cry and I'm definitely not stretching myself to the outer realms. But we're also really, really different. She's a young woman who is sort of figuring it out and making massive mistakes," she says.

"I'm figuring it out too but in a really different way because I'm in the beginning stages of my adult career and my adult ambitions. I also think I tend to write her a few steps behind me, so she'll be grappling with lessons that I feel like I've already learned."

The daughter of successful visual artists Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, Dunham grew up in Soho in New York. She says she never expected to be working in a mainstream venue like television — she expected to be "a weirdo performance artist in circles that understood exactly what she was going for."

"My parents' boldness, it just sort of entered my sister and me through osmosis," she says. "We're not brave all the time, but it really helps to have parents who have a kind of ('screw it') attitude. And also an understanding of the ups and downs and peaks and valleys of life as an artist."

Though she has long considered herself a feminist, Dunham says her awareness of sexism has been deepened by the sheer number of online attacks on her. A quick glance at her Twitter mentions reveals a steady stream of abuse, mostly focused on her body and unabashed nudity in "Girls."

"I think I thought sexism was on its last legs. I think I thought it was like a staggering old behemoth falling to the ground, and starting my career has just given me the sense that we have so much further to go," says Dunham. "If I told everyone who had tweeted something mysogynistic to me that they were misogynist, I wouldn't even know what that word meant anymore. And I always say I don't want to be the girl who cried misogyny. I really, really try to take each situation at face value. But it is amazing both in my public and private life how much of the negative dialogue I get into has to do with my femaleness."

After wrapping filming last month, the fourth season of "Girls" is set to premiere in 2015. In the third season finale, Hannah was accepted into the elite Iowa Writers' Workshop and told her shocked boyfriend (Adam Driver) she planned to attend.

Hannah will be in "the most mature place we've ever seen her" at the start of season four, says Dunham.

"She is trying to make choices that will have a positive impact on her future for a long time to come. But I think she learns that making adult choices doesn't always lead to a perfect outcome or simplicity," she says. "And then, um, Shoshanna cut her hair to her chin. Big hair news!"

All of the central characters — Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna — can be infuriatingly selfish and entitled, presenting an often-ugly image of the millennial set. In one episode, Hannah complains she "feels nothing" when an acquaintance dies; she can only cry when she steals and re-tells a friend's invented story about a loved one's death.

But Dunham says she doesn't think of characters in terms of "likable or unlikable."

"I don't pick friends because I find them likable, I pick friends because I find them interesting and complicated and unusual," she says. "But I also recognize that for certain people, television is escapism and they want to see idealized people, especially idealized women. I know Hannah makes a lot of mistakes but I also think she tries her hardest and her heart is in the right place and she approaches life with humour and gusto. Those are qualities that I admire in a woman."

Dunham calls herself a "Canadaphile" and lists Alice Munro among her literary idols — so it's no surprise she's "thrilled" to share her book at the Toronto comedy fest.

"I think Canada is a place with an amazing history of both literature and comedy and it's a really, really exciting place for me to go with the book," she says. "I also want to eat poutine and I want everyone to tell me where the best poutine is. I want to sample all the poutine."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2014