Join Eleni Sikelianos and Mónica de la Torre for an afterparty at Torn Page, celebrating the launch of Memory Rehearsal.

Memory Rehearsal is a genre-busting encounter between a poet and her ancestral past documenting a startling intersection of queer history, ancient theater, Utopian visions, and modern poetry.

In 1901, Eva Palmer abandoned her life as a privileged New York socialite, moving to Paris with her lover, writer and salonist Natalie Barney. The two Americans became the center of a wild tangle of lesbian love affairs and backyard performances based in an intentional reimagining of Sappho’s work and life. This hotbed of early European modernism saw in the ancient past the possibility for sexual and artistic emancipation, especially for lesbian women.

This is the third book in a trilogy of hybrid memoirs in which Sikelianos reckons with a family shaped by mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. Grappling with knots of personal and broader histories, she performs a powerful act of recovery, re-situating herself by claiming her lineage.