Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge MA in 1949, attended catholic schools in Arlington and graduated from UMass (Boston) in 1971. She came to New York in 1974 to be a poet. Her latest: Snowflake/different streets is a dos a dos, meaning you turn it over and it’s another book. Xylor Jane who shows at Canada Gallery in NYC did both the bubbling covers. In LA Review of Books Brian Teare said of Snowflake/different streets “Myles’ genius lies in making the grand gesture that includes the trivial detail and the sublime at once, their juxtaposition underscoring how we are small and made large by connection, paradoxically isolate and dependent.” Then he quotes the poet Alice Notley who points out that the persistent autobiography in all of Myles’s work “may be seen as a continuous striving for unity, of moment to life to short line to poem to performance of poem already written.” Inferno (a poet's novel, 2010), Eileen’s book before Snowflake is in fact a Kunstlerroman in which she does chronicle the life of a female poet very much like Eileen Myles. Myles first became known to many Americans through her openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States in 1991-92. Her poetic education took place at St. Mark's Poetry Project from 1975-77 in workshops lead by Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan and others and by attending hundreds of readings for about ten years and then for the rest of her life. In 1977 and 79 she published issues of dodgems, a poetry magazine which presented a collision of New York School, Language Poetry, performance texts, unconventional prose as well as tossed off notes from neighbors and celebrities. She co-edited in 1977 the feminist anthology Ladies Museum (w Timmons, Kraut and Notley) and in 1979 she worked as assistant to poet James Schuyler. That same year Eileen was a founding member of the Lost Texans Collective (w Elinor Nauen & Barbara McKay) which produced Joan of Arc a spiritual entertainment and Patriarchy, a play (1980). Solo performances were to follow: Leaving New York (1989), Life (a performance by Eileen Myles) (1991) and Summer in Russia (1996) at PS 122, the Judson Church, Franklin Furnace and the WOW Café and her plays Feeling Blue Parts 1, 2, & 3; Modern Art; and Our Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, which she wrote for Alina Troyano, were all produced at PS122. Always a virtuosic performer and reader of her own writing Eileen Myles has toured, read widely since the early 80s all over North America and Europe and off and on with Sister Spit, the queer & feminist post punk performance troupe since 1997. Other books include The Importance of Being Iceland/travel essays in art (2009), Sorry, Tree (poetry) 2007, Tow w/ artist Larry C. Collins (2005), Skies (2001), on my way (2001), Cool for You (novel, 2000), School of Fish (1997), Maxfield Parrish (1995), Not Me (1991), and Chelsea Girls  (stories, 1994). In 1995, with Liz Kotz, she edited The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading. From 1984 through 1986 Eileen was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. In 2004 she wrote the libretto for the opera, Hell, composed by Michael Webster performed in 2004 and in 2006. In 2010 for the Dia Center for the Arts she created and directed “The Collection of Silence” a large performance piece engaging dancers, poets, children, visual artists and Buddhists in a collective public act of silence at Hispanic Society in NYC. Eileen is a Professor Emeritus of writing & literature at UC San Diego where she directed the program from 2002 to 2007.  In spring, 2010 she was the Hugo Writer at U. of Montana in Missoula. In November 2010 she was the Fannie Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She began teaching in Columbia’s MFA program in Spring 2012 and she’s there this fall and at NYU in spring 2013. She’s also a frequent teacher/participant at Naropa and the SLS seminars. As journalist & art writer she contributes to a wide number of publications including Art Forum, Parkett, The Believer, Vice, Cabinet, The Nation, TimeOut, Book Forum and AnOther Magazine and has written catalogue essays in recent years on Sadie Benning, Cathy Opie, K8 Hardy, Oscar Tuazon, Emily Roydson. and for “The Air We Breathe” show at SFMOMA and “Riotous Baroque” at the Zurich Kunsthaus. In 2007 Eileen received an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital art writers' grant for “Iceland.” Her Inferno received a Lambda Book Award for lesbian fiction in 2011. The Poetry Society of American awarded her the Shelley Prize in 2010. In 2012 she’s a Guggenheim fellow in non-fiction for her forthcoming dog memoir Afterglow. Let more awards and honors come. She lives in New York.