Electronic Literature Organization

The Electronic Literature Collection, volume one is the topic of Katie Haegele’s column in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week. She writes:

But wouldn’t it be nice to get our arms around this thing, to get a sense of the full breadth and scope of what’s called digital literature?

The 60 works in the first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection (ELC) (http://collection.eliterature.org) - edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland - show the wide range of forms that exist within the genre.

The column describes the keyword index and discusses four of the pieces included in volume one of the Collection in detail.

On Thursday, May 17th, at the Institute for Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, in Leicester, a UK Launch of the Electronic Literature Collection will be held. Scott Rettberg will be introducing the ELC at the at the event, and John Cayley, Jon Ingold, Chris Joseph, and Kate Pullinger will be reading from their work. The first 50 attendees will receive a free copy of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 on CD-ROM.

The ELC has recently been reviewed internationally in a number of publications including a review in El Pais by Stefano Caldano, a review by Tim Wright in Realtime Arts, a review by Edward Picot in the Hyperliterature Exchange, and a review by Jesper Olsson in Svenska Dagbladet.

Submissions are open for the 3rd Ciutat de Vinaros International Prize of Digital Literature. There are three prizes in Digital Narrative (2500 Euros), Digital Poetry (2500 Euros) and a special “Vincent Ferrer Romero” Prize for the best work of Digital Literature written in Catalan (1000 Euros). This is currently the only annual prize competition with a substantial purse in electronic literature, and all digital authors are encouraged to submit. The judging criteria specify:

• Works that explore and use the possibilities of the computer as a space for creation.
• Literary quality, seen as the renovation of poetic and narrative techniques through new means of creation.
• Quality and accessibility of the interface design.
• In the case of digital poetry, texts submitted may comprise a single piece of work or a compilation of poetry.
• The jury will also take into account works that experiment with the Internet as a medium for literary creation.
• Works entered for these prizes must be unpublished and written in one of the following languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Catalan.

The submission deadline is September 14, 2007