The Memory Palace

The rooms in The Memory Palace are filled with holy relics, profane agonies, memories that are revelations, and windows to wonders . . . A significant poetry collection by JoSelle Vanderhooft, dealing with the raw themes of youth, pain, the Catholic faith, and the challenges of growing up gay. Structured around the Renaissance mnemonic device of a building with rooms populated by thoughts and objects, THE MEMORY PALACE is a lucid dream, a remarkably powerful memoir, and a fantasy. "Inside The Memory Palace, JoSelle Vanderhooft constructs a painfully honest memoir in free verse, detailing one talented young woman's odyssey past the monsters of mental illness, through the brutal clash between faith and sexuality, always haunted by the terrible enigma of a father's suicide -- yet these traumas are counterbalanced by earnest hope and the small, sweet moments life grants to fighters and survivors. Her eloquent and eminently readable story will resonate with any one who's ever found themselves an alien in their own world, peering in at society from the outside." -- Mike Allen, three-time Rhysling Award winner and editor of Mythic Delirium