Virtual Event: Eileen Myles

Harvard Book Store welcomes renowned, award-winning poet EILEEN MYLES—author of over twenty volumes of poetry as well as the acclaimed memoir, Afterglow—for a discussion of their book-length essay, For Now. They will be joined in conversation by ANDREA LAWLOR, author of the beloved novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.

Contribute to Support Harvard Book Store

While payment is not required, we are suggesting a $3 contribution to support this author series, our staff, and the future of Harvard Book Store—a locally owned, independently run Cambridge institution. In addition, by purchasing a copy of For Now on harvard.com, you support indie bookselling and the writing community during this difficult time.

About For Now

Blending humor and meditation, this wide-ranging essay by the award-winning poet and writer Eileen Myles is a candid record of the multivalent forces that shaped them as a writer. It is also a thoughtful investigation into the way that writing is inescapably enmeshed with time. Myles recounts how potential eviction from their apartment; relationships with friends, lovers, and neighbors; and the textures and identities of various cities, including New York and Marfa, Texas, all present a sense of writing as presence within time. “Once I tasted time I never wanted anything else. . . . The only way I can prove it is that I started writing. Writing is my alibi,” they note. The author concludes that writing is a form of loving that makes living “more beautiful” because “I have time for it, I am in it.”

Praise for For Now

“[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hip Virgil, . . . is happy to show us the way.” —NPR

"A sharply etched, unvarnished self-portrait." —Kirkus Reviews