Eileen Myles on the Pleasure and Pain of Pets

(Myles, Eileen) Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty books, including Chelsea Girls and, most recently I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1975-2014. Myles's many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writers’ Grant, a Lambda Book Award, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing, and the Shelley Prize from The Poetry Society of America. Afterglow (a dog memoir) (Grove Press) launches Myles’s heartfelt and fabulist investigation into the true nature of the bond between pet and pet-owner. In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly became central to the writer’s life and work. Starting from the emptiness following Rosie’s death, we witness Myles’s experiences with intimacy and spirituality, celebrity and politics, alcoholism and recovery, fathers and family history, as well as the fantastical myths we spin to get to the heart of grief.