Published as a companion piece to their debut story collection, Bread and Water, 1969 recounts with wry exuberance a year in the emotional life of the poet Eileen Myles, or their canny stand-in, at the louche age of nineteen turning twenty. Writing of early boyfriends, witnessing Woodstock, porch times and Boston bars, Myles presents a portrait of personal aspiration and dissolution at the peak of American counterculture and global revolution.

The poet, novelist and former presidential candidate Eileen Myles moved to New York in 1974 and quickly became involved in a vital circle of artists based around the St. Marks’ Poetry Project. Myles’ work is widely recognized as an exemplar of first-person writing, owing to their eye for the irreverent power of the slapdash and mundane, how a swab of peanut butter or coffee cup rings evoke keen truths of being and appetite. Myles is the author of queer canon texts Chelsea Girls (1994) and Cool for You (2000), and recently, the literary anthology, Pathetic Literature (2022).