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Mel Hammond

Mel Hammond is just another childless, millennial cat mom. Check out her work at melhammondbooks.com.

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Mel's Latest Articles

A simple vertically split image collage. The left side displays the book jacket for Quan Barry's "The Unveiling," which renders a mountainous iceberg that's reflected in the water below. A red and dark purple background surrounds it. On the right, a black-and-white photo of Quan Barry, whose head is turned to gaze out a window.
Terror at the edge of the earth
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Culture
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October 1, 2025

Quan Barry's horror novel, "The Unveiling," mines a deadly South-Pole expedition to explore America's ongoing racial haunting.

A hand holds up a copy of Quan Barry's "Auction" which shows a translucent toilet created by Korean artist Do Ho Suh. Behind the book is the all-window corner of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, which showcased Suh's work in 2017.
Quan Barry refuses to look away
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Culture
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March 14, 2024

In her new poetry collection, "Auction," Barry sees beauty in life's ugliness.

“And for those hours, we weren’t in prison. We were transformed to a different world.”
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Politics
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October 4, 2023

A new podcast explores the power of the humanities in Wisconsin prisons.

Photo of an outdoor event where two librarians in rainbow tutus sit at a long table with two drag queens.
Madison-area librarians vs. the far right
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Politics
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July 19, 2023

Despite harassment, Madison-area librarians bring Pride events to LGBTQ+ youth.

Photo: Author Mel Hammond cut out and colored the hate mail and bad press she received for her trans-friendly book A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image and used it to make a rainbow collage.
I wrote a trans-friendly kids’ book. The Internet called me a filthy groomer
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Culture
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June 14, 2023

One Madison-based author’s experience with book-banning and manufactured outrage.