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In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Suffused with alcohol, drugs and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young queer artist's life; with raw, flickering stories of awkward love, laughter and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool and intimate account of how one young female writer managed to shrug off the imposition of a rigid cultural identity. Told in an audacious and singular voice made vivid and immediate in lyrical language, Chelsea Girls weaves together memories of Myles' 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, a volatile adolescence, unabashed 'lesbianity', and riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s and 80s New York.