Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was educated at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. They moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet, and subsequently a novelist, art journalist, and writer of libretti. They gravitated to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, where they studied with Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Paul Violi, and Bill Zavatsky. From 1984 to 1986, Myles was the artistic director of St. Mark's Poetry Project.

They have published twenty volumes of poetry and fiction, including evolution (2018), Afterglow: A Dog Memoir (2017), I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 (2015), Inferno: A Poet's Novel (2010), The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009), Sorry, Tree (2007), Skies (2001), Cool for You (2000), Chelsea Girls (1994), and Not Me (1991).

Myles is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2011, Myles was a featured writer on Harriet. In 2016, they received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. They have taught at New York University and Naropa University. Myles's film, The Trip, can be seen on YouTube. They live in New York City and Marfa, Texas.