Eileen Myles: An Interview

In this interview, American writer, artist, performer Eileen Myles (b.1949) discusses the various philosophies that motivate her work, including the language of film, embodied performance, and the alienation evoked by bodily vulgarity. Myles links her wide range of artistic and literary practice with notions of abstraction, improvisation, and the mythology of gender, which she explores in relation to her own identity as a working, middle-class lesbian woman. She reflects on the significance of geographical locations, both New York City and San Diego, on her art, and shares how her past struggles with addiction have shaped her life and practice.

Myles was Artistic Director of St. Mark’s Church from 1984 to 1987 and co-edited the anthology The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading (Semiotext(e), 1995). To date, she has produced over twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays and performance pieces. Myles is a Professor Emeritus of writing and literature at UC San Diego, and currently teaches at New York University, Columbia University, and the Naropa Institue in Boulder, Colorado. She lives in New York City.

– Faye Gleisser

Interview conducted by Sadie Benning and Solveig Nelson in October 2007, edited in 2014.