Writing Guideposts

Hannah Tinti is a writer, editor, and teacher.  Her short story collection, Animal Crackers, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her best-selling novel, The Good Thief, is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, winner of the The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award. She is now finishing a new novel.

Hannah has worked at bookstores, magazines, publishing houses, and literary agencies. In 2002 she co-founded the award-winning magazine One Story and for the past 12 years has been its Editor in Chief. In 2009 she received the PEN/Nora Magid award for excellence in editing and in 2014 One Story won the AWP Prize for Best Small Press. In 2011, she joined the Public Radio program, Selected Shorts, as their Literary Commentator, interviewing authors and actors about the importance of literature and reading.

More at www.hannahtinti.com

More on First Draft on Aspen Public Radio: aspenpublicradio.org/programs/first-draft


First Cuts from First Draft - Hannah Tinti

Eileen Myles was born in Boston in 1949, attended catholic schools in Arlington, Mass. and graduated from UMass (Boston) in 1971. She came to New York in 1974 to be a poet. Inferno (a poet's novel) which comes out in fall of 2010 from OR books chronicles the adventures of a female writer in hell very much like Eileen Myles. Inferno is actually a kunstlerroman. Myles first became known to many people for her openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States in 1991-92. She received her poetic education at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in 1975-77 where she participated in workshops lead by Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan and others. In 1977 and 79 she published issues of dodgems, a poetry magazine which presented a collision of New York School, Language Poetry, performance texts and other likely aesthetics of the time. She co-edited the feminist anthology Ladies Museum (w Timmons, Kraut and Notley), worked as assistant to poet James Schuyler in 1979, and was a founding member of the Lost Texans Collective (w Nauen & McKay) which produced Joan of Arc a spiritual entertainment and Patriarchy, a play. Following these were solo performances: Leaving New York (1989), Life (a performance by Eileen Myles) (1991) and Summer in Russia (1996) at PS 122, the Judson Church, Franklin Furnace and the WOW Café and her plays Feeling Blue Parts 1, 2, & 3; Modern Art; and Our Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, which she wrote for Alina Troyano, were all produced at PS122. Her books include The Importance of Being Iceland/travel essays in art (2009) for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital art writing grant, Sorry, Tree (poetry) 2007, Tow w/ artist Larry C. Collins (2005), Skies (2001), on my way (2001), Cool for You (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. From 1984 through 1986 Myles was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. In 2004 she wrote the libretto for the opera, Hell, composed  by Michael Webster and performed on both coasts and in Tijuana in 2004 and in 2006. She is a Professor Emeritus of writing & literature at UC San Diego where she taught from 2002 to 2007.  In Spring, 2010 she was the Hugo Writer at U. of Montana in Missoula. In November of 2010 she will be Fannie Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She contributes to a wide number of publications including Art Forum, Parkett, The Believer, Vice, Cabinet, The Nation, TimeOut, Book Forum and AnOther Magazine. She received an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital art writers' grant for “Iceland.” The Poetry Society of American awarded her the Shelley Prize in 2010. She lives in New York. . . .

Eileen Myles Reading

CalArts Critical Studies