EILEEN MYLES has written thousands of poems since she gave her first reading at CBGB’s in 1974. Bust magazine calls her “the rock star of modern poetry” and The New York Times says she's “a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde.” Publishers Weekly declares  that, in her new book Skies, she's “the native informant of living life punkily on the streets,” but alsoher as “having the best of both worlds, as working-class Bostonian and New York aesthete.” Eileen headed to New York after college, (U. Mass., Boston) quickly gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitue of the household of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan’s East Village. From 1977-79 she edited a poetry magazine, dodgems. From 1984-86 she was Artistic Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project. She also wrote, acted in, and directed plays at St. Marks and PS 122: Joan of Arc: a spiritual entertainment, Patriarchy, a play, Feeling Blue, Pts. 1, 2 & 3, Modern Art, My Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, and a solo performance piece, Leaving New York. Always, she has been a virtuoso performer of her own work—she's read to audiences at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across America as well as in Europe, Iceland, and Russia. In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. In 1997 Eileen toured with Sister Spit’s Ramblin’ Road Show. Her books include Skies, (2001), on my way, (2001), Cool for You (a 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 (Semiotext(e). She’s a frequent contributor to Book Forum, Art in America, The Village Voice, The Nation, The Stranger, Index, Open City and Nest. She is a Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego.  She is currently writing a novel called The Inferno and an opera called Hell.