Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Her Inferno (A poet's novel) (2010), tells the story of that decision, and was described by John Ashbery as “Zingingly funny and melancholy.” Eileen’s books of poetry include Not Me, School of Fish, Skies, Maxfield Parrish and Sorry,Tree. Chelsea Girls (1994) was her first fiction book, followed by Cool for You, a nonfiction novel (2000). In San Diego she wrote the libretto for the opera Hell (composed by Michael Webster). She directed the writing program at the University of California at San Diego for five years, returning to New York in 2007. Eileen's articles and columns have appeared in Art Forum, Art in America, Book Forum, Parkett, the Harriet blog, and the Brooklyn Rail. Her essays were collected in The Importance of Being Iceland (2009) for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writers grant. In 2010, the Poetry Society of American awarded Myles the Shelley Memorial Award.
