Title: Lynda Barry papers
Inclusive Dates: 1978-2016

Creator:

• Barry, Lynda

Unique Identifier: uac331

Quantity: Comics, original art, scripts, manuscripts, composition books, correspondence, ink drawings, posters

• 3 Linear Feet
• One records storage box and one flat metal edge box

Repository:

University of Wisconsin-Madison. University Archives and Records Management

Archival Location:

UW-Madison Archives and Records Management (Map)

Abstract:

Lynda Jean Barry is an educator, cartoonist, and graphic novelist known for her weekly comic strip "Ernie Pook's Comeek" and and award-winning graphic novels such as One! Hundred! Demons! and Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor. In 2013 she became the Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity. Her courses explore the transformative impact of drawing on self-expression, communication, and transdisciplinary research, particularly for students who do not consider themselves artists.This collection contains a sampling of comics, illustrations, manuscripts, scripts, columns, commentaries, essays, writing exercises, interviews, portfolios, and clippings representative of Barry's work as a cartoonist, essayist, playwright, novelist, and professor from the 1980s to the 2010s. The collection also includes over a dozen of Barry's handwritten and illustrated composition books that document her personal life and relationships from 1988 to 2019, which are restricted by Barry's request until 2065 or her death. The collection includes numerous drafts and manuscripts including: the manuscript of the novella Cruddy, hand written using sumi ink and a brush; drafts of strips from Ernie Pook's Comeek mainly from the 1980s; and a hand annotated draft of the 1984 script adaptation of NAKED LADIES NAKED LADIES, which reflected on Barry's encounters with sexuality as a child and teenager. Much of the collection consists of Barry's published essays, radio commentaries, comics, album cover art, book covers, and event posters. Much of this is found in two portfolios, one from the mid 1980s, and one which spans the bulk of Barry's career.

Language: English .

URL to cite for this finding aid: https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-ua-uac331

This collection is open for research. However, some items in the collection may have restrictions. Folders 1 through 15 are scheduled as confidential by University of Wisconsin-Madison at the donor's request. Please consult University Archives staff for more information.

Gift of Lynda Barry, 2024.

Lynda Jean Barry was born on January 2, 1956 in Richland Center, WI. Her mother Pearl Landon was a hospital janitor of Filipino and Irish ancestry who grew up in the Philippines and had previously worked as a WAVE. Her father Bob Barry was a meat cutter of Irish and Norwegian ancestry who had been in the Navy. She spent most of her childhood in a working-class racially diverse neighborhood in Seattle, where her Mother's Filipino relatives lived. Barry later described her mother as neglectful and cruel, but as a child she found solace in her loving relationship with her maternal grandmother Rosario Landon who lived with the family during parts of Barry's childhood. Barry attended Franklin High School in Seattle and then transferred to Roosevelt High School. Barry left home for Evergreen State College in 1974.

At Evergreen she first took courses with her lifelong mentor Marilyn Frasca and met her friend Matt Groening, who encouraged her to pursue cartooning. Her comics were first published in the school's University of Washington Daily newspaper in 1977. In 1979 she began publishing Ernie Pook's Comeek in the Chicago Reader. The strip combined humorous and nostalgic stories about the members of a dysfunctional working class family, reflections on the inner lives of young girls, and groundbreaking explorations of childhood trauma, abuse, and the often bleak realities of adolescence. By 1989 Barry's strip appeared weekly in more than 50 publications. It was syndicated in alternative newspapers until 2008.

Her book-length publications include: comic collections such as The Greatest of Marlys, The Freddy Stories, and Blabber, Blabber, Blabber; the illustrated coming of age novella The Good Times are Killing Me, which Barry adapted into an award-winning Off-Broadway play; the "autobifictionalography" comic collection One! Hundred! Demons!; the dark and violent illustrated novel Cruddy; and award-winning graphic novels focused on the creative process of making comics including What It Is, Picture This, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, and Making Comics.

In the spring term of 2012, Barry served as an artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arts Institute. In 2013 she became the Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity. Her courses explore the transformative impact of drawing on self-expression, communication, and transdisciplinary research, particularly for students who do not consider themselves artists. From 2013-2018 Barry was in residence at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, where she ran exhibitions and held events and workshops at the Image Lab. In 2014, she founded the Drawbridge program, which paired graduate students with four-year-old co-researchers in order to help them explain and understand their work by drawing. In 2016 she was chosen as the first recipient of the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art. The endowment allowed Barry to hire teaching assistants and buy tools such as a scanner and copier. In 2017 she taught at the Clarion writers workshop.

Additional information about Barry's teaching career and her digital files can be found in the Comics Room Collection. This collection contains additional zines and comics by her students and by Jeff Butler's students. uac138. Additional materials by Barry's students include the A Room Alive! Making Comics Together collection uac180, Matthew Webster Inktober collection uac147, and the TOMBOY Composition Book collection uac196.

This collection contains a sampling of comics, illustrations, manuscripts, scripts, columns, commentaries, essays, writing exercises, interviews, portfolios, and clippings representative of Barry's work as a cartoonist, essayist, playwright, novelist, and professor from the 1980s to the 2010s. The collection also includes over a dozen of Barry's handwritten and illustrated composition books that document her personal life and relationships from 1988 to 2019, which are restricted by Barry's request until 2065 or her death.

The collection includes numerous drafts and manuscripts including: the manuscript of the novella Cruddy, hand written using sumi ink and a brush; drafts of strips from Ernie Pook's Comeek mainly from the 1980s; a hand annotated draft of the 1984 script adaptation of NAKED LADIES NAKED LADIES, which reflected on Barry's encounters with sexuality as a child and teenager; and handwritten essays and story ideas including "Dreams," (1978) "What it's like to be popular," (1986) "Not the one he wanted to see," (1986).

Other unpublished materials include: "Notes for writing the screenplay" (1992), an imagined conversation between Barry and "E," who may represent the character Edna from The Good Times Are Killing Me; writing exercises such as phrases heard on public transit, X pages, and short stories often focused on childhood memories; illustrated homework assignments for Barry's classes; and answers for a 1995 interview with Susan Herman that covers many themes including Barry's influences, artistic process, and interest in children's lives and inner worlds; and miscellaneous illustrations.

Much of the unrestricted collection consists of Barry's published essays, radio commentaries, comics, album cover art, book covers, and event posters. Much of this is found in two portfolios, one from the mid 1980s, and one which spans the bulk of Barry's career. The portfolios include: clippings of comics, illustrations, and interviews from Seattle Rocket, Seattle Times, Arizona New Times, Ms. Magazine, Village Voice, Washington Post, Artery, Los Angeles Reader, New York Review of Books; cover art for John Delafose and the Eunice Playboys; book covers for Girls and Boys and The Greatest of Marlys; and posters for lectures by and hosted by Barry at Lawrence University and the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Some of the posters, such as one illustrated for the band The Iguanas, are not part of the portfolio and in separate folders.

The published writings include commentaries for National Public Radio (NPR), a Los Angeles Times column reflecting on bittersweet food centered memories of her family, the fiction column 1619 East Crowley, and miscellaneous essays such as "The Magic Bus" and "A House Divided." The NPR commentaries include "War" (1991), in which Barry reflects on her mother's traumatic memories of the Japanese assault on the Philippines and protests the human cost of the Gulf War, "Soul Mama 14", about racial tensions on ten year old Barry's block at the height of the Black power movement, and "Arbor" (1992) about Barry's abortion at age 18, which includes a first and final draft. The Los Angeles Times column includes "When Grandma Discovered Hot Dogs, and Other Tales" (1991) and "Cookies" (1993).

Collection materials may be subject to laws governing rights. Researchers are solely responsible for determining the rights status of the materials they use. Permission may be required for some uses such as publication or reproduction.

For more information on citing our collections, see the citing archival resources page on the UW-Archives website. this page of the UW-Archives website.

Minority women in comicsComics roomNovelistsFilipino American artistsCartoonistsComics room

Box [89136397486]   1   folder 1	RESTRICTED Composition book, 1988-08-23-1988-09-20
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 2	RESTRICTED Composition book, Last House Notes 1988-08-27-1988-09
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 3	RESTRICTED Composition book, Chicago 1989-03-27-1989-05-08
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 4	RESTRICTED Composition book, The Breakup Journal 1989-12-06-1990-01-04
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 5	RESTRICTED Composition book, The Breakup Book 1989-12-31-1990-01
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 6	RESTRICTED Composition book, Ragdale 1990-05-26
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 7	RESTRICTED Composition book, 1990-11-1990-12
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 8	RESTRICTED Composition book, 1991-12-05-1992-01-08
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 9	RESTRICTED Composition book, 1992-03-10-1992-04-11
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 10	RESTRICTED Composition book, Ragdale 1993-02-20-1993-03-05
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 11	RESTRICTED Composition book, 1996-07
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 12	RESTRICTED Composition book, 2009
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 13	RESTRICTED Notebook, 2010
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 14	RESTRICTED Composition book, 2019-05
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 15	RESTRICTED Notebook
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 16	Dreams, 1978-03-26
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 17	Publicity photographs, 1980-1991, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 18	Graphic design portfolio clippings, 1980-1984
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 19	Comic rough drafts, 1983-09-1985
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 20	Graphic design portfolio, Mademoiselle magazine 1984-02
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 21	NAKED LADIES NAKED LADIES screenplay script, 1984-08
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 22	Graphic design portfolio, Mademoiselle magazine 1984-11
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 23	Miscellaneous writing and correspondence, 1986-2011
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 24	1619 East Crowley fiction columns and Mother Jones clippings, 1989, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 25	Ernie Pook's Comeek strips, 1989, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 26	Les Blank catalog and related correspondence, 1989
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 27	Metro Ride notes, 1989-02-24
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 28	Something New essay, 1989
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 29	A House Divided essay, 1990-09
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 30	NPR commentaries and Gang of 7 script, 1990-1992
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 31	Miscellaneous comics and paper doll, 1990-1994
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 32	The Magic Bus script, Circa. 1991
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 33	Los Angeles Times columns, 1991-1993
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 34	Ragdale foundation mailers, 1993
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 35	Susan Herman interview material, 1995-04-14
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 36	The Iguanas poster and miscellaneous art and comics, 1995, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 37	Miscellaneous publicity clippings, 1995-2003
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 38	Cruddy manuscripts, Circa. 1999
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 39	Cruddy drafts, 2000, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 40	One Hundred Demons, Resilience comic draft 2000
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 41	Miscellaneous comic, writing, and illustrations 2005-2009
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 42	Writing the Unthinkable book signing flier, 2009
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 43	Class notes, word bag, and schedule planner 2011-2014
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 44	Miscellaneous writing and drawing exercises, 2012
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 45	UW-Madison Arts Institute original event posters, 2012
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 46	UW-Madison class assignments, lesson plans, and exhibit flier 2013-2014
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 47	On Wisconsin magazine, 2014
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 48	Drawbridge materials, 2015, undated
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 49	Stages and Pages conference program, 2016-07
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 50	Annotated article, Culture, Trance, and the Mind-Brain 2017-09-01
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 51	Miscellaneous correspondence, 2018-2019
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 52	Planner, 2018-01-2019-12
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 53	Liber Linteus story and comic
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 54	Marlys comics, original drawings, fliers, and letterhead
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 55	Miscellaneous illustrations
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 56	Miscellaneous ink drawings
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 57	Resumes
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 58	Student questions, lecture notes, ink tests, and scribble monsters
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 59	UW-Madison comics club fliers
Box [89136397486]   1   folder 60	WORT poster drafts and miscellaneous original art
Box [8913639338]   2   folder 1	Graphic design portfolio, newspaper clippings 1983
Box [8913639338]   2   folder 2	Graphic design portfolio, original art 1984
Box [8913639338]   2   folder 3	Newspaper clippings, 1983-2016
Box [8913639338]   2   folder 4	Portfolio, 1985-2014