Meet Larkin McPhee
Larkin McPhee is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, NOVA, and National Geographic, but her most personal story isn’t on screen. In her debut memoir, I’ll See You in My Dreams: A Sister’s Memoir (Köehler Books, June 10, 2026), Larkin writes about her brother Charles McPhee, the beloved host of the nationally syndicated Dream Doctor Show, and the extraordinary bond they shared over a lifetime of conversation, creativity, and dreams. At its heart, the book is a celebration of siblinghood, and a meditation on what it means to truly know someone, and to carry them with you long after they’re gone.
Your work has taken you into powerful, real-world stories—but what made you decide that your own family story was the one worth putting on the page now?
A family crisis set this story in motion for me. What I feared the most in life happened to me when my younger brother, my best friend, was diagnosed with ALS. Everyone faces loss in life, it’s just that the loss of my brother happened too early. He was diagnosed at the age of 44. Charles was a truly remarkable person, and I wanted to share him with the world.
You’ve explored dreams through your brother’s work—do you think dreams are more like messages, memories, or mysteries we’re still trying to decode?
Dreams are often imbued with mysterious properties because their symbolism can sometimes be hard to discern or interpret. But if you begin to pay attention to your dreams and to what is unfolding in your life at the time, you will begin to understand the language of your dreams. As Charles said, “dreams are your friends.” They often are sending you wise advice from your subconscious to pay attention to your deepest fears or your deepest desires. Dreams are often commenting on the “headline news” in your waking life. Pay attention. They are there to help.
What’s something about your brother Charles that people think they know from his public persona—but only you truly understood?
The beauty of Charles is that he was fully present for everyone he met. I was just fortunate to get so much more of him than the rest of the world.
As a filmmaker, you’re used to shaping narrative through images. What changed for you when you had to shape a story through grief instead of footage?
When I embarked on this book writing project, I knew that I had many fun and colorful stories to share about my life with my younger brother. Many of the stories I tell evoke a cinematic feel. His illness, while important, would be the backdrop to the story of our wonderful friendship that spanned our time together. I don’t think I would have been inclined to write this memoir if I didn’t have access to so many wonderful assets such as: Charles’s lengthy letters to the family from Antarctica in his twenties, his dreams, my dreams, his radio show commentary, my diary and five years of thoughtful emails among the family when Charles became ill. Our story felt universal to me, like stories that I tell in my films.
If your sibling bond had a visual aesthetic or color palette, what would it look like?
Always, I think of myself with my brother in nature soaking up its beauty, whether it be under a canopy of brilliant stars, hiking a windswept ridge somewhere in California, scuba diving in the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean or watching him alone gracefully conquer a series of moguls on a snowy mountaintop.
What’s a moment between you and your brother that feels small but has stayed emotionally “loud” your whole life?
Charles always picked up on my vulnerability and made me feel safe, no matter the situation. He role-modeled the definition of a true friend for me.
In writing I’ll See You in My Dreams, what surprised you more—what you remembered, or what you had forgotten?
What surprised me is not just what I remembered, but how the memory was enriched by time and looking back. For example, Charles loved C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Reflecting on this childhood love and the series’ magical wintry setting, I realized it may have influenced Charles’s decision to take a year off from college and work in Antarctica, mostly shoveling snow, when he was just twenty years old.
You’ve worked with PBS, NOVA, and National Geographic—how did those experiences shape your ability to tell something as intimate as your own memoir?
Each of these extraordinary work environments taught me how to craft a story, whether it be about the lifecycle of a horseshoe crab in Delaware Bay or a stunning ballerina’s struggle with an eating disorder. I have produced many films on the subject of mental health and have captured deeply private moments with participants in my films. Their courage to share their most intimate thoughts absolutely gave me the courage to share my own.
Do you believe we keep people with us through memory, ritual, or storytelling—or something else entirely?
All three, but I now place storytelling and the act of writing down the memories as the greatest lifeline to my cherished relationship with my brother. I was so afraid of losing all the beautiful memories of being with him for forty-nine years. Writing this memoir is my response to holding him even closer.
If your brother could read your memoir, what’s the one thing you hope he would quietly nod and say, “Yes… that’s exactly right”?
When he died, I believe I interpreted his last act of free will, correctly. He was always thinking of everyone else. In the last hours of his life, Charles showed that what really matters in life is paying attention to the needs of everyone that surrounds us.
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