Madness was created during the pandemic and went through many forms before it became what you see here. It’s appearance and content are very much shaped by my time in isolation. Initially, I copied out the play Hamlet by hand starting in March 2020 because I was too anxious to sit and read. I also was making paper puppets for companionship. The project kept changing as events swirled around me. I struggled to make sense of the project in a world gone crazy. The text is a crazy quilt arrangement of lines from Hamlet and my writing on repeating themes of fear, disease, Black Lives Matter, Asian hate crimes, the insurrection, so much death and isolation. Madness was printed letterpress with polymer plates from Boxcar Press on Arches Text wove paper. The background pattern is made up of my renderings of tears, drops of blood, Covid-19 particles and bullet holes. The paper puppet inclusions were printed on University of Iowa Center for the Book Chancery paper and are costumed in papers of wheat straw, sisal, daylily fibers, and abaca paste papers made by Andrea Peterson. The non-adhesive covers are flax and abaca papers made by Mary Hark for the outside and flax papers from the University of Iowa Center for the Book for the inside. Encased in a cloth covered clamshell box. The book was printed in an edition of 25 copies with a few strays. Madness was funded in part by a grant from the College Book Art Association and I thank them.