Electronic Literature Organization

Following their game plan (or walkthrough) for First Person, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have brought their anthology Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media to the electronic book review (ebr) to bring the threads of discussion to life. Section One, Computational Fictions, has arrived at ebr and the subsequent sections will soon follow.

Together with Third Person, these two anthologies will form a trilogy of works from scholars, artists, and industry professionals on interactive narrative and drama forms. According to ebr,

The material in these volumes and on ebr represents a new level of dialogue between creators and critics about emerging forms of fictional and playable experience.

The ebr publication of the texts will not only open the book to readers across the Internet, but will also offer a site for continued conversation as readers respond to the texts through ripostes.

The essays previously published in the ebr “First Person” thread evoked (and provoked) responses from such central figures as N. Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, and Stephanie Strickland.

The publication continues ebr’s long-standing relationship with MIT press, and that press’ continued work toward public online discussion of its texts, as seen in the recent and ongoing vetting of Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing.

The Table of Contents of the Second Person release follows. (more…)

The ELO’s Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 has been a great success for the electronic literature community. Over the past year, it has been widely distributed, read, and reviewed, and has been utilized in classrooms all over the Americas and Europe. It is the only collection of its kind — a free and freely distributed, Creative Commons-licensed, edited selection of sixty diverse exemplary works of electronic literature.

We are pleased to announce sponsorship opportunities for the second volume of the Collection, to be produced over the course of the next year. The publication of the first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection was made possible by the support of institutional sponsors, academic programs and organizations, who each contributed about $1,000.

The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 will be a web and DVD publication of approximately fifty works of electronic literature including hypertext fiction and poetry, interactive fiction, digital poetry, and other forms that use the capabilities of the computer to provide compelling literary experiences. Works are selected from an open international call for works and by invitation from the editorial board, with a goal to collect, preserve, and make widely available exemplary works of e-lit from the past and present. The project is also distinguished by the fact that the works published in the Collection are distributed under a Creative Commons license, which enables students, library patrons, and other individual users to recopy and distribute the works. The scholarly outcome of the project is the publication of 3,000 copies of the DVD and web publication of the same content. The DVD will be widely distributed, particularly to students at institutions where new media is studied. Three leading writers in the field of literary new media, Talan Memmott, Brian Kim Stefans, and Rita Raley, will serve as the editorial board of the second volume of the Collection. The call for works for the ELC2 will be announced at the ELO’s upcoming Visionary Landscapes Conference this May.

Benefits for Institutional Partners: If you choose to participate, your institution’s name will be listed as a project partner on the published DVD package, and your institution’s name and logo will be displayed on the project web site. The project will thus serve to enhance your institution’s reputation as an active stakeholder in the development of the field of electronic literature. More importantly, your students and curriculum will benefit. Each institutional partner will receive 50 copies of the DVD for your institution and students’ use. The Collection can serve as a curriculum base for a course in contemporary electronic literature. As a project partner, you will also have the opportunity to host a launch event for the Collection that the ELO would help you to plan and organize, including readings of works of electronic literature and free distribution of the DVD. We can also make internship opportunities available to your undergraduates in the ELO, as well as writing opportunities for graduate students interested in contributing to our presentation of works on the ELO Directory and Showcase.

Contributions will be used for the material costs involved in the design, publication, and distribution of the Collection.

To make sponsorship arrangements and to process a contribution, please contact our Managing Director at MITH, helen DeVinney (hdevinney@gmail.com). You can also contact Joseph Tabbi (jtabbi@gmail.com) or Scott Rettberg (scott@retts.net) with any questions about this opportunity or other ELO programs.

Individual donations in support of the publication of the ELC2 are also welcome. To support this program, make a donation via Network for Good or Paypal.