The Memory Dictionary

by Madeleine Barnes (Aytgir)

The Memory Dictionary is a limited-edition book written by Madeleine Barnes and designed/hand-bound by Sara Lefsyk of Ethel Zine and Micro Press. Displayed and sold in the gift shop at the Whitney Museum of American Art, it sold out numerous times. The book reimagines the purposes and uses of a dictionary, treating it as a playful object that continually unfolds and morphs, accumulating meaning over time, rather than serving as a static authority on the world around us. The book writes toward what scholar Sarah Ahmed terms “the messiness of the experimental” and explores dictionaries as objects that can be influenced and shaped in real time by our experiences, memories, and perspectives.


From the press: Madeleine Barnes is a writer and visual artist living in Brooklyn. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow at Baruch College. Her debut full-length poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was published by Trio House Press in 2020. She is also the author of Women’s Work (Tolsun Books, 2021), Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2019), and The Mark My Body Draws in Light (Finishing Line Press, 2014).

53 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Madeleine Barnes is the author of Women's Work (Tolsun Books, 2021), You Do Not Have to Be Good (Trio House Press, 2020), Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2019), and The Mark My Body Draws in Light (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in The Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, PANK, Prelude, FENCE, The Brooklyn Review, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and composition at Brooklyn College and New York University, where she received her MFA in 2016. She has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center.