Call for Proposals: Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations

The electronic literature community has developed many online publications (‘zines and similar resources) that feature Web-based technologies and have typically taken the form of websites. The ELO seeks to encourage the creation of new spaces (‘zines) in which to curate, promote, and explore a greatly expanded set of works on popular social media spaces online. These might include video sharing sites, mobile platforms, or social media networks. The goal of our initiative is to stimulate and support the creation and dissemination of quality electronic literature in a much greater variety of locations.

We are looking for proposals to create new recurrent publication spaces that:

• Are designed as fully integrated venues in app ecosystems and/or social media platforms. These publication venues can have a web component, but the primary means of distribution should be through these platforms.
• Consider the promotion of creative work a priority but are open for creative/scholarly combinations.
• Follow community credentialing standards, such as editorial oversight, peer review, juries, etc.
• Have a marketing and social media distribution plan to build up their audience.
• Publish at least two “issues” per year.
• Are team efforts with a clear work plan.
• Have an estimate of monetary needs.
• Have a sustainability plan that considers three aspects:
  • Financial: explains how they will generate revenue to sustain operations,
  • Organizational: has a plan for continuing beyond its founding publishers,
  • Preservation: has plans for maintaining publication in the long term, and documentation of ephemeral works.

Interested? Send us a 500 word proposal that addresses all the points above by November 1, 2020. If you have any questions or seek additional guidance, please contact ELO President Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org).

The ELO is prepared to fund one or more proposals in 2020-21, which will receive up to $1,000 in startup funds to cover licensing and developer fees, graphic design, software infrastructure, marketing, programming, etc. We can also help the team(s) with recruiting efforts, disseminating calls, and promoting it through our communication channels.

The winning team(s) will run the publication and prepare a report in which it shares its plans and processes, successes, lessons learned, and other insights from creating and running the publication. This report is to be presented in the ELO 2022 Conference.

ELO Board members are not eligible to apply to this initiative.