WATCH: Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi and Eileen Myles on Writing Against Linearity

PEN/Faulkner Award winning author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi celebrates the release of her newest novel Savage Tongues, featuring a kaleidoscopic discussion of craft, narrative, and ideas with acclaimed poet Eileen Myles (Evolution, Chelsea Girls).

Oloomi’s Savage Tongues has been named a Most Anticipated Book by Lit Hub, Lambda Literary, Refinery29, Harper’s Bazaar, and several other publications. Vulture described the book as “a love story of the most fevered, brutal order… propulsive, erotic, and darkly dreamlike,”. In a personal and political exploration of desire, power, domination, and human connection that’s equal parts Marguerite Duras and Shirley Jackson, Rachel Cusk and Clarice Lispector, Savage Tongues traces a young woman’s search for healing in the fall-out of an affair with a much older man.

In conversation with influential poet and prose writer Eileen Myles, featuring their most recent book, For Now—a candid, peripatetic reflection on identity, vocation, and place—Oloomi graces the Greenlight virtual stage for an evening’s exploration of the unsettling territories of violence and eroticism, haunting and healing, and the profound intimacy born of the deepest pain.

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Founded in October 2009 by Rebecca Fitting and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, Greenlight Bookstore is an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York. Combining the best traditions of the neighborhood bookstore with carefully curated, community-minded events, Greenlight has earned a reputation as a literary destination. Greenlight has continued to serve its community during the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse array of virtual events, and has been inspired by the movements for racial justice across the country to engage in the work of becoming a more anti-racist company. Learn more at greenlightbookstore.com or check them out @greenlightbklyn.