From groundbreaking musician, actor, fashion icon and futurist JANELLE MONÁE and an outstanding group of collaborators comes THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN, a collection of short fiction, bringing to the written page the rebellious and Afrofuturistic world of Monáe’s critically acclaimed album Dirty Computer.

“In this moving, triumphant collection, singer Monáe returns to the dystopian world of her Dirty Computer concept album and short film...Though a special treat for Dirty Computer fans, readers won’t need to be familiar with the album to marvel at the big ideas, riveting action, and hopeful message here. This is a knockout.”
–Publishers Weekly, *starred review

“Blistering, hopeful, and richly written. . . All readers will finish the book craving more of these extremely queer, bold stories that battle gatekeeping and erasure, digging into both the worst potential of a surveillance state and the gritty glimmer of the rebellion that can defeat it.”
—Booklist, *starred review

Janelle Monáe, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado, and Sheree Renée Thomas have delivered a sexy, soulful, and dissident collection of tales that expands the bold vision of Dirty Computer—in which Monáe introduced us to a world where people’s memories—a key to self-expression and self-understanding—could be controlled or erased by an increasingly powerful few. And whether human, A.I., or something in-between, citizen's lives and sentience were dictated by those of the New Dawn, who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide fate—that was, until Jane 57821 remembered and broke free.

Grown from the soil of that mythos, the stories in THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN explore the lives of those living in the heart and at the edges of a growing surveillance-hungry, totalitarian order—striving to see and hold on to their “dirtiness” without being tracked down and cleaned.

Perfect for fans of Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor, THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN is a story collection filled with the artistic innovation and brave themes that have made Janelle Monáe a global influence; an anthology that sees our battles about gender identity, political violence, and sexuality as matters of space, time, love, and, of course, the power of memory.

YOHANCA DELGADO is a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Nightmare, One Story, A Public Space, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University, and is a graduate of the Clarion workshops.

EVE L. EWING is an author and a sociologist of education whose research is focused on racism, social inequality, urban policy, and the impact of these forces on American public schools and the lives of young people. Her works include Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism & School Closings on Chicago's South Side, the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, and the middle-grade text Maya and the Robot (illustrated by Christine Almeda). She has written for the Champions series, the Ironheart series, and other Marvel projects. Along with the award-winning author and poet Nate Marshall, Ewing wrote the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, commissioned by the Poetry Foundation. Ewing is currently an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service and an instructor for the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, a visual arts and humanities project that connects teaching artists and scholars to men at Stateville Maximum Security Prison through classes, workshops, and guest lectures.

ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON is the author of seven novels for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel for adults is Trouble the Saints, winner of the 2021 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her young adult novel The Summer Prince was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Love Is the Drug won the Norton Award. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Mexico, where she received a master’s degree with honors in Mesoamerican Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for her thesis on pre-Columbian fermented food and its role in the religious-agricultural calendar.

DANNY LORE is a queer black writer/editor raised in Harlem and currently based in the Bronx. Their contemporary speculative fiction and science fiction has been published in FIYAH, Podcastle, Fireside, Nightlight, EFNIKS.com and other venues. Their comics work includes Queen of Bad Dreams for Vault Comics, Quarter Killer for Comixology, James Bond for Dynamite Comics, and Star Wars Adventures for IDW Publishing. They have short comics in Dead Beats and The Good Fight, and have also edited The Good Fight anthology and The Wilds from Black Mask comics. Their work is included in the YA prose anthology A Phoenix Must Burn from Viking Books.

SHEREE RENÉE THOMAS’ first all-fiction collection, Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Forever, was a best collection finalist for the Locus Awards and the World Fantasy Awards. Her work also appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (1945-2010) edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer from Vintage Anchor. She is also the author of two multi-genre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life, longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award, and Shotgun Lullabies. A Cave Canem Fellow honored with residencies at the Millay Colony of the Arts, VCCA, Bread Loaf Environmental, Blue Mountain, and Art Omi / Ledig House, her stories and poems are widely anthologized and her essays have appeared in venues such as The New York Times. Thomas edited the two-volume World Fantasy Award-winning Dark Matter (2000, 2004), which first introduced W.E.B. Du Bois’ work as science fiction, and co-edited the anthology Trouble the Waters. She was the first Black author to be honored with the World Fantasy Award since its inception in 1975. She serves as the Associate Editor of the award-winning journal Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and as the Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949. Thomas was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award—Professional category for her contributions to the genre. She Lives in Memphis, Tennessee, near a mighty river and a pyramid.