Available once again for a new generation of readers, the groundbreaking and candid coming-of-age novel in real time from one ofAmerica's most celebrated poetsthat is considered a cult classicIn this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel,Eileen Mylestransforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles’ 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed “lesbianity,” and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young artist’s life; and poignant with stories of love, humour, and discovery,Chelsea Girlsis a funny, cool, and intimate account of a writer’s education, and a modern chronicle of how a young female writer shrugged off the chains of a rigid cultural identity meant to define her.