The daughter of a Greek father and a Minnesotan mother, Eleni Gage has always been obsessed with cultural rituals and traditions. So, after having grown up in Athens, Greece, and the suburbs of Worcester, Massachusetts, it was an obvious decision for her to study Folklore and Mythology when she went off to college at Harvard University (although said parents hoped she’d choose something more practical…like, say, English).
Now a writer with an ongoing fascination with folklore, Eleni is the author of the travel memoir North of Ithaka, which describes her experience living in Lia, the small Greek village where her father was born, and her upcoming first novel Other Waters, which will be released by St. Martin’s Press in February, 2012. Set in New York and India, Other Waters is about seeking–and surviving–love in all its forms (including familial, romantic, and the highly elusive love of self), while ricocheting between two worlds. It was only after having finished both manuscripts that Eleni realized the pomegranate–a folkloric symbol of abundance–plays a significant role in each book, which is why she chose to incorporate the symbol into this site.
A freelance writer and editor whose articles have appeared on the covers of Travel+Leisure, T, Budget Travel, Town&Country Travel, and Real Simple, Eleni has also contributed to The New York Times, Parade, and The American Scholar, and held staff positions at Allure, Elle, InStyle and People magazines. She’s also a writing instructor, having taught academic writing to first-year students at Columbia University while pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing there, and led travel-writing workshops for media professionals through Mediabistro in New York.
After over a decade as a single woman in Manhattan, Eleni is shocked to discover that she now lives in Miami Beach with her husband, a Nicaraguan coffee trader. She picked her wedding date a year before meeting the man she eventually married, with the help of an Indian astrologer who told her she’d wed a “soft-hearted businessman” on 10.10.10. This accurate prediction is one of the many events in Eleni’s life which have confirmed her belief that Folklore and Mythology, with its focus on ritual, tradition, and divination, is by far the most useful major she could have chosen.
And at her 10.10.10 wedding reception on the Greek island of Corfu, the tables were decorated with pomegranates that the bride and groom and their friends and family picked in Lia. The fertile fruit seems to have worked its magic, as Eleni and the soft-hearted businessman welcomed their first child, a daughter, in August 2011. For more than you ever wanted to know about Eleni, visit her blog, www.theliminalstage.com
