PEN Presents: Myriam Gurba & Eileen Myles

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Fiction, poetry, and memoir, Eileen Myles’s work traverses genre with an emphasis on precedent: “There is no escaping history.”

Join Eileen Myles (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, I Must Be Living Twice, Afterglow, Evolution) in conversation with Lambda Literary Award finalist Myriam Gurba (Mean) to discuss the impact history has on art and conflict.

PEN Presents celebrates the power of words to inform, entertain, inspire, and foster a vital literary culture. This evening’s event will include a reading, conversation, and question-and-answer session followed by a reception and book signing.

Myriam Gurba is a high school teacher, writer, podcaster, and artist who lives in Long Beach, California. Her most recent book, the true crime memoir Mean, was a New York Times editors’ choice. Publishers Weekly describes her as a “literary voice like none other.” Gurba co-hosts the AskBiGrlz advice podcast with cartoonist, and fellow biracialist, MariNaomi. Her collage and digital artwork has been shown in museums, galleries, and community centers. She gets a big kick out of lecturing teens on civics and economics and her favorite things include staring at the Pacific Ocean, shooting the shit with her family, and convincing small children that inanimate objects can and will fart. Follow her on Instagram, @alt_myriam_gurba666, to access a porthole directly into her limbic system.

Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty books, including Chelsea Girls, Cool For You, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Creative Capital’s Literature Award as well as their Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant.