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Inferno (a poet's novel)

Eileen Myles

"I was completely stupefied by Inferno in the best of ways. In fact, I think I must feel kind of like Dante felt after seeing the face of God. My descriptive capacity just fails, gives way completely. But I can tell you that Eileen Myles made me understand something I didn’t before. And really, what more can you ask of a novel, or a poet’s novel, or a poem, or a memoir, or whatever the hell this shimmering document is? Just read it." — Alison Bechdel

WINNER OF THE 2010 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR BEST LESBIAN FICTION

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Send a blank email to badmirror@orbooks.com and get a free copy of the interview "Bad Mirror: A Conversation with Eileen Myles."

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Paperback: $16/£11
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Ebook: $10/£7
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Print + Ebook: $20/£14
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About the Book

Praise for Eileen Myles’ Inferno

“What is a poem worth? Not much in America. What is a life worth? Inferno isn’t another ‘life of the poet,’ it’s a fugue state where life and poem are one: shameful and glorious. People sometimes say, ‘I came from nothing,’ but that’s not quite right. Myles shows us a ‘place’ a poet might come from, did come from––working class, Catholic, female, queer. This narrative journey somehow takes place in a moment, every moment, the impossible present moment of poetry.” – Rae Armantrout

“Zingingly funny and melancholy, Inferno follows a young girl from Boston in her descent into the maelstrom of New York Bohemia, circa 1968. Myles beautifully chronicles a lost Eden: ‘The place I found was carved out from sadness and sex and to write a poem there you merely needed to gather.’ ” — John Ashbery

“Eileen Myles debates her own self identity in a gruffly beautiful, sure voice of reason. Is she a ‘hunk’? A ‘dyke’? A ‘female’? I’ll tell you what she is––damn smart! Inferno burns with humor, lust and a healthy dose of neurotic happiness.” — John Waters

From its beginning—“My English professor’s ass was so beautiful.”—to its end—“You can actually learn to have grace. And that’s heaven.”—poet, essayist and performer Eileen Myles’ chronicle transmits an energy and vividness that will not soon leave its readers. Her story of a young female writer, discovering both her sexuality and her own creative drive in the meditative and raucous environment that was New York City in its punk and indie heyday, is engrossing, poignant, and funny. This is a voice from the underground that redefines the meaning of the word.

Publication November 30th 2010 • 256 pages.
Cover with flames: paperback ISBN 978-1-935928-03-4 • ebook ISBN 978-1-935928-04-1
Cover with mouth: paperback ISBN 978-1-935928-06-5 • ebook ISBN 978-1-935928-07-2

About the Author

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Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 and soon began reading her poems publicly, taking workshops at St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York’s East Village and publishing in little magazines, zines and larger journals such as Partisan Review and Paris Review. Her books of poems include Not Me, School of Fish and Sorry, Tree. With Liz Kotz, she co-edited the notorious The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading, responding to the short-lived gay and lesbian publishing boom in the ’90s. Her first fiction was Chelsea Girls (1994), followed by Cool for You (a nonfiction novel) in 2000. She directed the writing program at the University of California at San Diego for five years, returning to New York in 2007. In San Diego she wrote the libretto for the opera Hell (composed by Michael Webster), performed in 2004-06. During that time she also wrote much of Inferno. For the last three decades she’s been writing reviews, articles, essays and blogs, most recently in Art Forum, Parkett, Vice, AnOther Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. Her essays were collected in The Importance of Being Iceland (2009). In 2010, the Poetry Society of American awarded Myles the Shelley Memorial Award. The same year, she was the Hugo Writer at the University of Montana at Missoula. She lives in New York.

Author Events

May 3rd
New York: 433 PAS - 6.00pm to 8.00pm (map)
Book launch for Camille Roy, reading with Camille Roy and Paul Foster Johnson


May 7th
Missoula, MT: Missoula Art Museum - 1.00pm to 2.30pm (map)

In the Media

About.com Poetry, November 29th 2011

Emily Books blog, November 2nd 2011

The G Scene, September 9th 2011

Women's Review of Books, September 1st 2011

For Books' Sake, August 22nd 2011

Lesbians of North London, August 1st 2011

The Brooklyn Rail, July 13th 2011

Lambda Literary, June 7th 2011

Poets & Writers, May 27th 2011

Next Magazine, March 11th 2011

Largehearted Boy, March 9th 2011

Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews, March 4th 2011

Book Punch, February 18th 2011

The Awl, February 14th 2011

The Believer, February 2011

The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2010

Art in America, November 29th 2010

Karen the Small Press Librarian, November 30th 2010

Orpheus Sleeps, November 28th 2010

bookforum.com, November 24th 2010

Lambda Literary, November 23rd 2010

Slack Lust, November 20th 2010

Bomb Blog, November 16th 2010

Books on the Radio, November 16th 2010

After Ellen, November 10th 2010

We Who Are About to Die, November 6th 2010

the open end, November 4th 2010

Bookforum, SEP/OCT/NOV 2010

The Stranger, October 20th 2010

Autostraddle, October 7th 2010

Poetry Off the Shelf, October 6th 2010

The New York Observer, October 4th 2010

Bookslut, OCTOBER 2010

The Rumpus, September 2nd 2010

Autostraddle, August 30th 2010

The Poetry Project, August 21st 2010

Killing the Buddha, August 17th 2010

Publisher's Weekly, August 9th 2010

Lambda Literary, August 5th 2010

HTML Giant, August 4th 2010

DC's, August 2nd 2010

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