What a night! To celebrate the publication of MEMORY by Dorothea Lasky (Spiral House), After 8 is thrilled to host Lasky for an evening of readings. One of the most unique voices in contemporary poetry, Lasky is joined by poets Star Finch, Jackqueline Frost, Justine Lextrait, and Noa Micaela Fields, for readings that explore themes of memory, personal and collective experience, and the poet’s essay.

MEMORY is a book of poet’s essays and homage to the landmark artwork of the same name by Bernadette Mayer. Lasky’s book moves across three dimensions of memory – ancestral, personal and poetic – to reflect on art; time, both everyday and the transcendent; charged sites of collective reminiscence, such as the moon landing; and forgetting through the author's father’s experience of Alzheimer’s.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including, most recently, The Shining (2023) and MOTHER (2026). She is also the author of the prose books MEMORY (2025), Animal (2019) and a future book about Sappho, as well as the editor of Essays (2023) and a coeditor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (2013). Her first novel, Katie, is forthcoming. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review, among other places.

Jackqueline Frost is a poet, intellectual historian and cultural theorist. She publishes verse, prose poetry, poetic essay, historical research, criticism and theory. Her essay, Notes on the Experimental Proletarian Tragic was recently published by Eric Pesty Editeur in French. Her decade-long lyrical prose experiment, The Third Event, comprising seven books, will be completed in 2027.

Claire Star Finch writes in the genre of the experimental-porno-weirdo. They perform their work solo and with the French queer collective RER Q. They have a doctorate in gender studies and do research on vomit and dildos as emancipatory literary forms. They are the author of Fuck Me Judith (After 8 Books, 2025) and Crache dans ma bouche puis crache dans mon autre bouche (Les Petits Matins, 2024).

Justine Lextrait writes, studies, edits, does participant observation, draws, cuts, moves around. She is the author of Loading Rooms (Lundimatin, 2025) the scrapbook zine Everyone is Layered (Publication Studio Paris, 2025).

Noa Micaela Fields is echodeviant enjambment queen (translation: trans poet with hearing aids). She is the author of E (Nightboat Books, 2026), an alterbook embracing mishearing as a vehicle for transformation. Among other places, her words have glitch-materialized in Anomaly, Literary Hub, Tripwire, and Zoeglossia, as well as various zines. She lives in Chicago, where she curates events at the Poetry Foundation and edits for Chrysalis, a literary magazine by and for trans youth.