Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, and art journalist whose vernacular, first-person writing across genres has made them one of the most recognizable writers of their generation.
They moved to New York from Boston in 1974 to pursue poetry and were educated through readings and workshops at St. Mark’s Poetry Project (1975–76) where they later served as artistic director (1984–86). A Guggenheim fellow, Myles has received numerous honors, including a 2014 grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Warhol/Creative Capital, the Clark Award for excellence in art writing, and a 2019 poetry award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Myles is the author of 21 books. Their fiction includes Chelsea Girls, which won France’s Inrockuptibles Prize in 2022 for Best Foreign Novel. Their art writing is collected in The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009). Notable poetry collections include I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975–2014 and a “Working Life,” their latest. Their Super 8 puppet road film, The Trip, is available on YouTube.
During their MacDowell residencies, Myles has worked on a memoir, written new poems, completed an essay for the Joan Mitchell retrospective at the Guggenheim, and begun the introduction for Pathetic Literature, an anthology they edited. In 2025, they continued work on their novel-in-progress, All My Loves.
Portrait by Alice O’Malley
