Eileen Myles, Hal Sirowitz and CAConrad September 28, 2007

EILEEN MYLES is probably America's best-known unofficial poet. Her latest book is Sorry, Tree in which she describes "some nature" as well as the transmigration of souls from the east coast to the west. Bust Magazine calls Myles "the rock star of modern poetry" and Holland Cotter in The New York Times describes her as "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde." Eileen arrived in New York after college, (U. Mass. (Boston)) 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, giving her first reading at CBGB's in 1974. A virtuoso performer of her work - she's read and performed at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across North America as well as in Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Russia. She's published more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti including Hell (an opera with composer Michael Webster, 2004) 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). In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. In the 80s she was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. In '97 and again in 2007 Eileen toured with Sister Spit, a post-punk female performance troupe. She has been a professor of writing at UCSD since 2002. In 2007 she received The Andy Warhol/Creative Capital art writing fellowship. She contributes to a wide number of publication including Bookforum, the Believer, and lately Cabinet, has written catalogue essays about Sadie Benning, Peggy Awesh and Nicole Eisenman and she blogs weekly on art at http://openfordesign.msn.com/

HAL SIROWITZ http://www.halsirowitz.com/ is the author of four books of poems, Mother Said, My Therapist Said (Crown), Before During and After (Soft Skull Press), and Father Said, also by Soft Skull Press. He is the recipient of a Frederick Delius Award and The Susan Rose Recording Grant for Contemporary Jewish Music. Mother Said will be released on CD with music composed by Alla Borzova, sung by Paul Sperry. John Flansburgh of the rock group, They Might Be Giants, has recorded him for Hello Records, and the group spoke about him during their Mother's Day interview for NPR's Studio 360. Garrison Keillor has read his work on NPR's Writer's Almanac. Sirowitz has performed on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS's Poetry Heaven, and NPR's All Things Considered. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a 2003 New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Sirowitz is also the best selling translated poet in Norway, where Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and has been made into animated cartoons. Hal is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He has a poem in Garrison Keillor's anthology, Good Poems, in Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast (W.W. Norton), in Poetry After 9/11 (Melville House Publishing) and in 110 Stories: Writers Respond to 9/11 (NYU Press). He worked for 25 years as a special education teacher for the New York City public schools. Hal is married to the writer Mary Minter Krotzer.

CAConrad's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with the PhillySound poets http://www.PhillySound.blogspot.com . Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. The Frank Poems is forthcoming in 2008 from CHAX Press. A selection of The Frank Poems was recently translated into German by Berlin poet Holger, and a bilingual chapbook is now available from Carrie Hunter's YPOLITA Press http://www.theFRANKpoems.blogspot.com . Jack Kimball's FAUX Press will be publishing a new series of poems (Soma)tic Midge in late 2007.

Official Website: http://www.robinsbookstore.com/events/092807_u.html