About this Event
Join us on April 1st at 6pm as we host Tory Henwood Hoen in conversation with Alana Craib to discuss her latest book, Before I Forget: A Novel. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase!
About the book:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A tender, funny portrait of love in its myriad forms." —Mikki Brammer, bestselling author of The Collected Regrets of Clover
A funny, heartfelt, late coming-of-age story that examines the role of memory in holding us back—and in moving us forward—for fans of The Collected Regrets of Clover and Maame.
Call it inertia. Call it a quarter-life crisis. Whatever you call it, Cricket Campbell is stuck. Despite working at a zeitgeisty wellness company, the 26-year-old feels anything but well. Still adrift after a tragedy that upended her world a decade ago, she has entered early adulthood under the weight of a new burden: her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
When Cricket’s older sister Nina announces it is time to move Arthur from his beloved Adirondack lake house into a memory-care facility, Cricket has a better idea. In returning home to become her father’s caretaker, she hopes to repair their strained relationship and shake herself out of her perma-funk. But even deeply familiar places can hold surprises.
As Cricket settles back into the family house at Catwood Pond—a place she once loved, but hasn’t visited since she was a teenager—she discovers that her father possesses a rare gift: as he loses his grasp of the past, he is increasingly able to predict the future. Before long, Arthur cements his reputation as an unlikely oracle, but for Cricket, believing in her father’s prophecies might also mean facing the most painful parts of her history. As she begins to remember who she once was, she uncovers a vital truth: the path forward often starts by going back.
With laugh-out-loud humor and profound grace, Before I Forget explores the nuances of family, the complexities of memory, and how sometimes, the people we know the best are the ones who surprise us the most.
About the author:
Tory Henwood Hoen is the author of Before I Forget (2025) and writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, and Bon Appétit, among other publications. Her debut novel The Arc was was published in 2022. She attended Brown University, and she currently lives in Vermont with her daughter and two cats.
Tory Henwood Hoen is the author of BEFORE I FORGET (2025) and THE ARC (2022). A graduate of Brown University, she now lives in Vermont with her toddler daughter and two spectacular cats. You can find her on Instagram @toryhenwoodhoen.
About the moderator:
Alana Craib (they/she) is a writer and artist from Ithaca, New York. Her work is often concerned with matters of love, green burial, queer bodies, mothers and grandmothers, ghosts and memory, the kitchen, and the bog. Alana is a recipient of the 2024 Andrea K. Willison Poetry Prize, the 2025 Feldman Prize in Fiction, and winner of Creation Magazine ’s 2025 Poetry Postcard Contest. In their free time, Alana enjoys playing on the guitar, collecting sentimental objects, collage and dozing. She holds a BA in Creative Writing and Literary History from Sarah Lawrence College. Alana currently lives in Providence, RI, where she is an MFA candidate at Brown University. She has work forthcoming with Foglifter Press and Zone 3.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Symposium Books, 240 Westminster Street, Providence, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 32.78
