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ELO Welcomes 3 New Board Members

ELO is pleased to announce the addition of three new members to its Board of Directors: Lai-Tze Fan, Erika Fülöp, and Reham Hosny.  These top scholars and artists extend ELO’s global representation as they reside in Canada, England, and Egypt, respectively.

ELO President Leonardo Flores welcomed the new members, saying, “We had a great community response to our first-ever open Call for Nominations resulting in a wonderful lineup of dedicated scholars and artists in the field. After much deliberation and keeping in mind our goal of continuing to diversify the Board of Directors, we chose three great scholars who will bring new energy and perspectives to our governing body. I am looking forward to collaborating with our new Directors! And huge thanks to all who put their names forth or accepted nominations. We will seek opportunities to get you involved in our projects!”

ELO has an all-volunteer board of members who serve renewable three-year terms. These new directors, for the first time, were drawn from a set of nominations from ELO’s members.  The organization continues to work to make this process more inclusive and transparent and is very pleased with the results.

Meet the new Board Members:

Lai-Tze Fan

Lai-Tze Fan

Dr. Lai-Tze Fan is an Assistant Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Fan is an interdisciplinary researcher who combines the fields of media studies, science and technology studies, digital storytelling, critical design, and cultural studies. Her research appears in the journals Mosaic, Convergence, Media Theory, and elsewhere.

Fan is also a practitioner of art installations, digital textuality and writing, interactive games, and critical making, with 15 solo and collaborative works of research-creation. With Nick Montfort, she created “Dial” (2020), a generative emoji-embedded poem representing networked, distant communication. With Anne Sullivan and Anastasia Salter, she created Masked Making (2021), a generative work that captures both the imagined making and fragments of text that represent the invisible faces, hands, and labour of women’s mask making during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also of note are video games for children’s health research that Fan helped design with the international Breathing Games Commons, as well as a smart phone application called Global Urban Wilds (2021) that she helped develop for the city of Montréal.

Fan currently serves as an Editor and the Director of Communications for the open-access journal electronic book review and Editor of the multimodal journal the digital review. She edited a special double issue of both journals called “Critical Making, Critical Design” (September 2021), which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. She also co-edited a special journal issue of electronic book review on “Canadian Digital Poetics” (February 2021). She is Co-Editor of the collection Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (Bloomsbury 2020).

Erika Fülöp

Erika Fülöp

Erika Fülöp is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Lancaster University. She previously held a Lectureship at New College, Oxford (2012-13) and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology at the University of Hamburg (2013-15). Since her doctoral thesis and first monograph on Proust and philosophy titled Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in À la recherche du temps perdu (Oxford: Legenda, 2012), she has been exploring increasingly recent and increasingly diverse modes of writing and authorship that question and expand the concept of writing and literature, including interferences between print books and networked writing, the impact of social networks on authorship, video writing on YouTube, and digital poetry and its translation. She has run several projects and conferences around these subjects, including Screening the Literary (2016-17) and The Creative Web of Languages (2017-19). In 2020 she completed a monograph co-authored with Gilles Bonnet and Gaëlle Théval on French creative literary experimentation on YouTube (‘Qu’est-ce aue la LittéraTube?’), and in 2021, adventured into learning to code & co. thanks to an EPSRC grant in order to carry out truly interdisciplinary research and analyses of electronic literature. You can find her research and learning diary here.

Reham Hosny

Reham Hosny

Dr. Reham Hosny is an Assistant Professor in English literature at Minia University, Egypt and previously, she was a Lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on creating links between the well-established western electronic literature communities and the growing digital culture innovators of other underrepresented communities. She is particularly interested in investigating the cultural, social, and political contexts of Arabic and Anglo-American electronic literature. Additionally, she is a creative writer. She is directing arabicelit, the first initiative focusing on globalizing Arabic electronic literature in the English language. She is an international consultant for the Electronic Literature Organization’s ELC4. She was also a co-organizer of the first international conference on Arabic electronic literature at RIT-Dubai, Feb. 25-27, 2018. She initiated and co-delivered the first electronic literature workshop in the Arab World and co-curated the first electronic literature exhibit in the Arab World at RIT-Dubai in 2018. She initiated the first autobiographical collection of Arab electronic literature authors on the ELMCIP knowledge base in 2015. She spent two years as a visiting scholar at College of Liberal Arts at RIT-New York and West Virginia University. She is an invited speaker in many international conferences, workshops, and symposiums at different places around the world such as the USA, the UAE, the KSA, Canada, Scotland, Norway, Egypt, Jordan, and the UK. She is a member of different international research networks such as the Intersections, Feminism, Technology & Digital Humanities network (IFTe) funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council. She is also a member of the Global AI Narrative (GAIN) network in the MENA region. Besides her scientific achievements, she received the Ihsan Abdel Quddous Literary Prize for short story writing for her short story collection Amma Ba’d (and thereafter) (2012). She also wrote Al-Barrah (The Announcer), the first Arabic artificial intelligence novel, in collaboration with Mohamed A. Nasef (2019, 2021). For more information, you can visit her personal website.

Leaving the Board

After years of service, a few Board members have also stepped down, including Helen Burgess, Serge Bouchardon, Stuart Moulthrop. We thank them for their service and their generous contributions of their time and talent.

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ELO Welcomes 2021-2022 Fellows

ELO is happy to announce the 2021-2022 ELO Fellows.

Hannah Ackermans, University of Bergen, Norway
Laura Sánchez Gómez, Faculty of Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid
Alexandra Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal
Shanmuga Priya, Department of History, Lancaster University, UK
Zahra Rizvi, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia

The ELO Fellows program is aimed to expand our scholarly activity, and our curatorial and creative practices with the appointment of six graduate and early career fellows. Extending our community, the fellows are also advancing our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion efforts. The Fellows program is overseen by Joseph Tabbi, who was assisted by Anna Nacher, Erik Loyer, and María Mencía on the selection committee.

The ELO Fellows are fivegraduate and early career Research Fellows for the academic year 2021/22, each of whom have been awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Fellows help contribute to various ELO projects, including the Electronic Literature Directory and its alliances with partner organizations such as ELO.

“We are excited to welcome this excellent group who will support ELO’s efforts to promote scholarly and creative work in electronic literature while working to create an inclusive and welcoming community,” said President Leonardo Flores, announcing the Fellows. “The Fellows enrich our community and help us realize our plans to promote and celebrate electronic literature.”

Presenting the 2021-22 ELO Fellows:

Hannah Ackermans

Hannah Ackermans

As a PhD candidate in digital culture at the University of Bergen (Norway), Hannah Ackermans researches the digital practices in the (academic) field of electronic literature. In addition to their research and teaching record in electronic literature and digital humanities, Ackermans was co-director of the Digital Humanities Network at the University of Bergen throughout 2019 and is a member of the ELMCIP Knowledge Base editorial board. Their current research interest is the digital accessibility of electronic literature and this will be the focus of their work as an ELO Research Fellow.

Laura Sánchez Gómez

Laura Sanches Gomez

Laura Sánchez Gómez currently teaches Didactics of Literature and Digital Humanities at University Complutense of Madrid and Nebrija University. She has a PhD in Literary Studies at Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis about electronic creation and the relationship between literature and art. She is member of the interdisciplinary Research Group LEETHI (European and Spanish Literatures from Texts to Hypermedia), and co-founder of CIBERIA, a platform about Spanish Language Electronic Literature. She has worked on different interdisciplinary cultural management projects at the Cervantes Institute, such as the exhibitions Return to Max Aub or Quijotes around the world; and she is co-curator of the exhibition Lorem BITsum: Electronic Literature, in Matadero de Madrid (2018). Her research focus is based on an interdisciplinary perspective focus in the changes brought by digital transformation in literature, arts and education.

Alexandra Martin

Alexandra Martin

Alexandra L Martin (she/her) is a researcher and doctoral student specializing in digital literary arts, living and working in the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke. Since 2019 she has worked at the Laboratoire NT2 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she also collaborates as a curator, notably on the exhibition S’éclipser | Phases of Resilience (2020) for the HTMlles Festival as well as Trans[creation] (2021). Her research centers on digital and organic networks of communities and the question of communal memory. Alexandra employs an ecocritical approach to her research and curatorial work, emphasizing the experiential process of reading or consuming digital art and the transformative power of this process over physical and digital spaces.

Shanmuga Priya

Shanmuga Priya

Shanmuga Priya’s research and teaching interests include an interdisciplinary focus in the areas of digital humanities, digital environmental humanities and digital literature. She is particularly interested in building and applying digital tools and technologies for Humanities research. She completed her Ph.D. at Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University, UK. She also received Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Toronto, Canada. She has published papers in national and international journals. She is one of interim executive committee members of DHARTI.

Zahra Rizvi

Zahra Rizvi

Zahra Rizvi is Ph.D. scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India, and founding-member of the Indian chapter of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). Her research interests include popular culture and media, young adult participatory spaces, video game studies, and digital humanities. She is currently working on a Media Archaeology project concerning Noha and Majlis E-lit Practices in South Asia. She was recently Ministry of Education-SPARC Fellow in Digital Humanities and Digital Cultures at Michigan State University, where she worked as Project Manager and Research Fellow on the “Digital Apprehensions of Indian Poetics” collaborative project.

 

 

 

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ELO22 Call for Proposals (May 30-June 1)

ELO22 Call for Proposals

Conference: May 30-June 1, 2022
Deadline: January 7, 2022
#ELOitalia
Submit via EasyChair.

The HStudies Research Group of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), with the University of Nagoya, Graduate School of Humanities (Japan), the Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers, the Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico), the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Núcleo de Pesquisas em Informática, Literatura e Linguística and the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazilian Digital Literature Observatory (Brazil), the Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy) have collaborated to organize the ELO 2022 International Conference and Media Arts Festival.

The theme for ELO 2022 is E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature. #ELOitalia

We invite artists, researchers, scholars, PhD candidates, experts and practitioners to submit works, papers, case studies, and media artefacts for presentation at the festival and in the different venues of the in-person conference and online workshops and seminars. 

THEME RATIONALE

Our society lives in a moment of complexity, where the exponential emergence of a web-based culture has triggered a different approach in relation to the spaces of communication, relationship, and learning. During the last years, the advent of new personal and wearable devices has favoured the emergence of a new literacy, based on a convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006).

Forms of fiction and literature underwent a process of disembodiment and cross-fertilization during the revolution from the Gutenberg Galaxy — printed paper, mass distribution — to the McLuhan Galaxy — new media, hypertext, collaborative writing — (Castells, 2003). The dimension of literacy has moved from a semiotically-measured geometry (De Saussure, 1916; Hjelmslev, 1969) to a dislocation and a deconstruction of contents and channels that give expression to new products (Derrida, 1974; Landow, 1994; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). The impact of social media on narratology has redefined the meaning of readership and authorship. The author has not only lost their traditional role, but becomes an icon of themself, a collective-minded producer that is self-perceived through the extra-flexed eye of the amniotic network in which they define their narrative experience (De Kerckhove, 2003). 

Literature takes on different roles within the so-called new media. Particularly, digital literature is central to the humanities and to the culture that emerges from the digital environment (Grigar, 2021) and it may play a central role in education too.

Every generation develops blended competencies under the influence of new tools and communication frameworks (Bardi, Ciastellardi, Di Rosario, 2019). For several years now when it comes to storytelling and literature, we have seen cultural references in a continuous process of transformation and redefinition, both because of digital tools available to the public, and because of different emerging channels of dissemination and distribution that are (self)produced in an increasingly massive way. What appears is a different form of understanding and learning, and a new form of education for people at any level and at all ages (not limited, thus, to a scholarly perspective).

This conference seeks to shed light on digital literature according to the epistemological crisis of authorship and the new dimension of participation and relationship offered by both the Web and new media. The conference will offer keynote speeches and talks to examine specific case studies. Moving from the state of the art, the aim is to investigate the interdisciplinary relations in the field of electronic literature, in order to recognize patterns of theories, technologies, and social dimensions of the phenomena to offer a critical toolkit to understand and map out the emerging knowledge and practices created by this field and the multifaceted dimension of education.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following conference’s tracks:

  • E-lit as Digital Humanities: Digital layers, multifaceted comprehension patterns and critical thought to redefine the e-lit dimension in educative environments.
  • Education beyond the (e)book: The possibilities of participatory culture in educational environments. How can e-lit promote values like democracy, pluralism, participation, diversity and sustainability…
  • Coding education: the use of e-lit to set up essential skills to adapt to the digital age.
  • E-practitioning: Literature and digital practices at crossroads.
  • We are platforms: Rethinking e-lit and its educative role and collaborative practices after the emergence of the pandemic.
  • AIrchive and UXPoetry: E-lit and its preservation between Artificial Intelligence and the need of a new poetic of user experience (UX). 
  • Digital Heterotopies: The possibilities within e-lit to present, criticize and denounce everyday social rhetoric.
  • Education on diversity and sustainability: E-lit as cultural practice to educate about integration, gender respectfulness and global sustainability. 
  • Politics and Policies: Education on e-lit as a framework for civic engagement and civil society.
  • STEAM-punk: The cross-fertilization among STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) and the different approaches to e-lit culture. 
  • Polysemy and synaesthesia: E-lit forms and works to open a different perspective of meaning and knowledge across multisensorial and plural dimensions of understanding. 
  • Electronic Opificium: The Aesthetics of Tech. Experiments and handcrafted works to revitalize the idea behind literature and its digital possibilities.

Interdisciplinary contributions are especially welcome.

Accepted abstracts will be presented in the parallel sessions of the Conference and full papers will be published in the proceedings of the Conference. The conference organizing committee will provide a selection of the best papers to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Submit via EasyChair.

Conference Talks in COMO (ITALY) & online

Submissions are welcome across the following formats: 

  • Paper (15 min – a presentation of a single paper by one or more authors – 500 words abstract). Paper submissions should be at most 3500 words long.
  • Poster (1- page poster – format A2). 250-word (max) proposal.
  • Panel (90 min – a proposal for a complete panel including 3 or 4 separate papers on the same general topic – 250 word overview plus 250 word individual abstracts).
  • Lightning Talks  (90 min – a proposal for a complete set of lightning talks, including 4-6 participants – 250 word overview plus 50-100 word descriptions of individual  5-7 minute talks).

Submissions should include the title of the submission, the name(s) and affiliation(s) of contributor(s), biographical notes for contributors, and a 500-word abstract.

The ELO22 conference will feature different synchronous and asynchronous venues. Online pre- and post-conference workshops and seminars will be organized in Japan, Israel, Finland, and Brazil.

For the in-person conference talks can be given in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese.

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by the members of the scientific committee.

Submit via EasyChair.

Festival Exhibition in Como (ITALY) & online

We invite proposals of digital artworks and e-lit pieces to be featured as part of the in-person ELO Conference and Art Festival on E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature.

All forms of electronic literature, multimodal writing, digital art, playful narrative, literary games, hypertext, and screen fiction will be considered. 

Please, be detailed on any special requirements. Submissions should provide the following information: 

Author name(s) and biographical note(s); 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference theme. 

If you would like your work to be considered for a performance, please indicate that on the submission with an additional description (250 words max) of the nature of the performance as well as any technical requirements.

Statements should be anonymized for peer review. Technical specification providing exact details of what will be required to facilitate the work’s inclusion in the exhibition. This should include information on the materials, technologies, and spatial requirements necessary, and what the artist will require the gallery to provide. Please, be as detailed as possible regarding physical components and needs, including wireless internet. 

Pieces accepted to either exhibition will need to be delivered (physically or virtually) prior to the exhibit’s opening, and will remain on display after the conference ends before being returned to the artist.  

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022.

Please, note, do to time constraints, participants may only appear in the program twice, including combinations of artworks and talks.

Submit via EasyChair.

For more information, contact Giovanna Di Rosario ELO 2022 Chair, e2lit@hstudies.net or giovanna.dirosario@hstudies.net 

Partnerships

Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy)

Politecnico di Milano (Italy)

University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

The Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers

Nagoya University (Japan)

Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil)

Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil)

Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico)

 

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Renew Your Membership TODAY!

Dear members of the ELO community,

The Electronic Literature Organization Board of Directors would like to thank you sincerely for your support of ELO in the past, and we want to invite you to continue that support. The organization and its members have had a tremendously successful year and are working hard to support and foster this momentum throughout 2021 and beyond. We hope that you will take this opportunity to support our ongoing mission by renewing your 2021 membership, and consider donating to our initiatives.

The cost of membership is inexpensive: Student/Unaffiliated Artist membership is $25; Regular/Affiliated, $50; Associate, $100; and Patron $500. To renew, visit http://eliterature.org/membership.

All funds generated go to the many exciting events and initiatives the ELO supports on behalf of e-literature artists and scholars. Here are some of our most prominent projects and events:

  • We had a tremendously successful conference and media art shows online at ELO 2021 in May. You can access the online exhibitions, and conference materials, including videos and papers freely at the conference website: https://conferences.au.dk/elo2021/.

  • The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 4 will be published later this year and will also be available open access.

  • We have relaunched our online archives as The NEXT, which showcases our digital preservation projects, including making Flash works accessible to current and future users.

  • We awarded funding for an initiative titled Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations, in which we sponsored the creation of two new publication venues: Filter and (RE)VERB.

  • We supported 8 ELO Fellows, who contributed to many initiatives, such as the Electronic Literature Directory, and including two Amplify Anti Racism Fellows, who helped bring fresh perspectives and artwork to the organization.

  • We also maintain a presence on several social media networks, such as:

You can also make targeted donations to support specific ELO initiatives, and the link to do that is available here: https://eliterature.org/membership/#donate.

Help us invest in our community by renewing your membership today!

And if you have already contributed with your 2021 membership dues, we are grateful for your continued support, and invite you to make a tax deductible donation to support our initiatives. The ELO is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the United States of America.

Many thanks,

Leo Flores

President

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Call for ELO Research Fellows 2022

Deadline: September 19,  2021

The ELO is continuing its expansion of scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of five graduate and early career Research Fellows for 2022, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Awards will be announced during the start of the Fall term.  In the coming month, we’ll be welcoming applicants who will be working with established ELO scholars and practitioners on a variety of ELO projects, such as the Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org), CELL (www.cellproject.net), The Digital Review (http://www.thedigitalreview.com), the electronic book review (https://electronicbookreview.com), and the Next (https://the-next.eliterature.org/). Each of the Fellows will be expected to complete a minimum of two ELD entries during the term of their appointment. Fellows can also work with their supervisors to develop metadata for works in collections, creating content for the works’ exhibition spaces, writing descriptions of works in the collections or the collections themselves.

The ELO expects our Research Fellows to better reflect our members’ interests and backgrounds within the diverse international electronic literature community. We actively encourage individuals who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic and language backgrounds to apply. Linguistic diversity will be particularly useful as our Fellows translate works in many languages from our growing consortium of e-lit databases.

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the ELD project director, Joseph Tabbi  (joseph.tabbi at uib.no).

 

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Call for Nominations to the ELO Board of Directors

The Electronic Literature Organization seeks engaged members of the ELO community for three open seats on the ELO Board of Directors (BoD).

The BoD is a working board dedicated to developing and sustaining the creation, scholarship, exhibition, and preservation of electronic literature. Board members serve voluntarily for three-year terms, with the opportunity for renewal for additional terms. In addition to bi-monthly meetings (via Zoom) and an annual retreat, board members work in various roles or initiatives (such as coordinating ELO Prizes, MLA panels, coordinating ELO fellows, among others). As a working volunteer BoD, its members do not receive any kind of financial compensation for the work they do, and must maintain membership at their own expense.

The current board is especially interested in expanding the diversity of the board. We seek the nominations of active e-lit scholars, artists, archivists, and others who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic and language backgrounds. Note that while we also wish to broaden the linguistic diversity of the board, all board business is conducted in English.

Here’s the process to fill board vacancies, amended to include community input:

  1. The BoD has a conversation about current needs in expertise, representation, etc. that can be addressed with new members.
  2. A nomination form is circulated to the ELO community.
  3. Board discusses nominees in the context of its needs and produces a ranked list of candidates to fill vacancies.
  4. The ELO President reaches out to the top candidates, determines interest, and discusses responsibilities.
  5. If interested, candidates submit a letter of interest and CV for consideration by the Board.
  6. The Board considers each candidate and votes.

Please use the nomination form embedded below (or here’s a link to it) to nominate yourself or someone else. Nominations will be open until September 19, 2021.

If you have any questions, please contact Leonardo Flores, ELO President at leo@eliterature.org.

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Hook’s “The Vine and The Fish” Wins the 2021 Coover Award

Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish

Shortlisted:
Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data
Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus
Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden

Jury: Jason E. Lewis, Amira Hanafi, Karen Ann Donnachie

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to announce that the 2021 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature  goes to Leise Hook for The Vine and the Fish.

Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish

From the judges: A slowly-but-surely unfolding narrative reflection on the power of language to create and dissolve the boxes in which we put—or from which we can free—one another, carried along by an intimate story of movement, migration, and the unstoppable fecundity of life. The jury was struck by how well the writing, visual design, and simple yet exquisitely crafted interactivity work together to pull us ever further into Hook’s world.

Shortlisted:

Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data

From the judges: This generative video poem looks into a not-so-far-off future in which the new knowledge gained by massive data collection is used to hypnotize consumers. The jury appreciated the tone of the work, which simultaneously mimics and critiques big data’s power to influence, and its activist intent, which hopes to unveil the viewer’s inconspicuous collaboration with those who seek to profit from the degradation of our privacy.

Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories

From the judges: This collection of work highlights Nelson’s playful mastery of metaphors. Of special note was the striking interactive card-catalogue-cum-cabinet-of-curiosities navigation controller which activates thoughtful visualisations of the locally embedded cultural narratives and archive from which it derives.

Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus

From the judges: The jury wants to acknowledge this work’s elegant intervention into natural language processing technology. Seedlings is a winsome digital manifestation of an extended agricultural metaphor, in which stages the browser as a fertile site for human and non-human collaboration.

Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden

From the judges: “Our stories are algorithms.” Dinkins’ powerful work immerses the viewer in the stories of generations of African American women in a vibrant visual environment that invites whimsy & sorrow, regret & celebration. The women gaze directly at the viewer, looking to both connect and bear witness, and challenge us to think deeply about how computational technologies are shaping the stories we tell and who tells them.

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New Maverick Award goes to Talan Memmott

The ELO is proud to announce the recipient of a brand new prize: The Maverick Award.  This first ever award goes to Talan Memmott.

The Maverick is awarded  to an independent spirit: a writer, artist, researcher, programmer, designer, performer, or hybrid creator who does not adhere to a conventional path but creates their own and in so doing makes a singular contribution to the field of electronic literature.

As founder of an alternative learning institution, creator of one of the first online journals of e-lit, author of celebrated works of e-lit, scholar of digital media, and an artist who challenged every medium he worked in, Memmott is a singular figure in the world of electronic literature.

Throughout his career, Talan Memmott has blazed a path in digital literature.   He is the author of over 40 electronic literary works, and the novel My Molly De parted (Free Dogma Press). His works, perhaps epitomized by Lexia to Perplexia, have been the subject of acclaim and extensive critical analysis.

Memmott is also the Founder and President of UnderAcademy College, an unaccredited undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate anti-degree institution.  UnderAcademy College situates itself as a shadow-academic environment offering alternative courses and anti-degree programs in a variety of subjects. This alternative site of education has offered one-of-a-kind courses, such as How to Read and Write Fake News: Journullism in the Age of Trump, which Memmott co-taught.

Memmott holds an MFA in Literary Arts/Electronic Writing from Brown University and a PhD in Interaction Design/Digital Rhetoric and Poetics from Malmö University.

Memmott has taught and been a researcher in digital art, digital design, electronic writing, new media studies, and digital culture at University of California Santa Cruz; University of Bergen; Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden; California State University Monterey Bay; the Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder; and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently Associate Professor of Creative Digital Media at Winona State University.

He has collaborated on many digital projects, including netprovs, such as, “I Work or the Web,” and the 2018 Congress of Fakes at ELO in Montreal.  He has served up computationally generated gastropoetic marvels with Scott Rettberg as part of ELO Cork and ELOrlando.

Memmott has  also given extensive service to ELO, having held a position on the Board, including Vice President.  He was a co-editor for the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 (ELO). He was also a co-editor of the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature.

During the award ceremony ELO Vice President Caitlin Fisher offered an origin story for the award: The idea came up at the wake for Damon Loren Baker for an award recognizing, the artists and scholars, like Damon, “amazing people, as part of the ELO Community, who are not likely to win the other awards because they are on a crazy, brilliant, genius path all their own.”

In the future, the Maverick Award is to be nominated and elected by the Literary Advisory Board. The award: $500 and a bottle of St. Germain.  Rettberg explained that the new award would go to someone “who took an unconventional path and who really colored outside of the lines, and of course, Damon is part of this prize, which is a bottle of Saint Germain, Damon’s favorite liqueur.”

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Pressman’s Bookishness wins the 2021 N. Katherine Hayles Prize

Bookishness cover image

Winner:
Bookishness, by Jessica Pressman

Honorable Mention:
Antología Lit(e)Lat. Vol 1. by Leonardo Flores, Claudia Kozak, and Rodolfo Mata (eds)
.break.dance by Marisa Parham

ELO is proud to announce that The 2021 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature goes to Jessica Pressman for Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age (Columbia 2020).

Winner:
Bookishness, Jessica Pressman

From the publisher’s page:

Twenty-first-century culture is obsessed with books. In a time when many voices have joined to predict the death of print, books continue to resurface in new and unexpected ways. From the proliferation of “shelfies” to Jane Austen–themed leggings and from decorative pillows printed with beloved book covers to bookwork sculptures exhibited in prestigious collections, books are everywhere and are not just for reading. Writers have caught up with this trend: many contemporary novels depict books as central characters or fetishize paper and print thematically and formally.

In Bookishness, Jessica Pressman examines the new status of the book as object and symbol. She explores the rise of “bookishness” as an identity and an aesthetic strategy that proliferates from store-window décor to experimental writing. Ranging from literature to kitsch objects, stop-motion animation films to book design, Pressman considers the multivalent meanings of books in contemporary culture. Books can represent shelter from—or a weapon against—the dangers of the digital; they can act as memorials and express a sense of loss. Examining the works of writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Leanne Shapton, Pressman illuminates the status of the book as a fetish object and its significance for understanding contemporary fakery. Bringing together media studies, book history, and literary criticism, Bookishness explains how books still give meaning to our lives in a digital age.

According to the prize jury:

“Bookishness provides a provocative look at the status of the book in the post-digital age. Pressman’s formulation of “bookishness” offers a compelling heuristic for considering the role of the overdetermining power of the book amidst the media shifts of the 21st century. Rather than sequestering electronic literature, Bookishness integrates a discussion of the digital with print-based texts, ushering in a new moment in e-lit scholarship in expertly crafted prose.”

Jessica Pressman is associate professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University, where she cofounded the Digital Humanities Initiative.  Pressman previously won the N. Katherine Hayles award forcoauthor of Reading “Project”: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s “Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}” (2015), which she co-authored.  She is the author of Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media (2014) and coeditor of Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era (2013) and Book Presence in a Digital Age (2018).

Honorable Mentions:

Leonardo Flores, Claudia Kozak, and Rodolfo Mata (eds). Antología Lit(e)Lat. Vol 1.

Front page of LiteLat

https://litelat.net/

The Latin American Electronic Literature Network (litElat) aims to bring together academics, researchers and artists who are interested in topics / works of electronic literature in the Latin American context. According to the jury,

“Lit(e)Lat is an overdue and powerful anthology that brings to the forefront the crucial contributions of Latin American and Caribbean writers to electronic literature since the 1960s. Collecting and curating this body of work, Lit(e)Lat expands the canon of electronic literature and demands attention to and promotes discovery of the remarkable work of these writers.”

.break.dance by Marisa Parham

breakdance cover image

http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue03/parham/parham.html#about

.break .dance is a time-based web experience opened in response to a prompt for a Small Axe Archipelagos issue, launched by Alex Gil and Kaiama Glover, and guest-edited by Jessica Marie Johnson. In thinking through and against the machineries of commercial interface efficacy, this pocket intentionally shows its material and discursive seams. Rooted in a sense of anarchival play, it is designed for multiple engagements, changes over time, and assumes no one will take the same path through. In its interface and experimental performances, .break .dance begs temporal patience and playful engagement with digital space. Here, touching and playing and looking are important to thinking. You can also read the process piece that goes with this project here. Acccording to the jury:

“.break.dance offers a compelling model of criticism that is itself a masterful piece of electronic literature. The piece prompts electronic literature scholars to look beyond the genres of monograph, anthology, and journal article to consider how the innovative and experimental methodologies of electronic literature can rewrite the rules of scholarship as we know it, using digital systems to dismantle larger systems of oppression.”

About the Award

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

Jury: Elika Ortega-Guzman, Roopika Risam, and Mark Marino

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Kate Pullinger Wins Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

ELO is proud to announce the winner of this year’s Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award Kate Pullinger:

Kate Pullinger

Ben Langdon Photography

Kate Pullinger: https://www.katepullinger.com/about-kate-pullinger/

As a print, film, stage, and new media writer, Kate Pullinger has brought these worlds of literature together for over three decades. Early on, she taught online at trAce, and for years she has supported many critical initiatives to introduce digital fiction and digital literacy in schools in the UK and internationally. As a celebrated print author, including winning the 2009 Governor General’s Award, Kate has done much to extend awareness of electronic literature, while creating some of its most innovative projects.

She developed “Lifelines,” accompanied with teacher’s book and successfully used in many schools. She is also one of the creators of “Inanimate Alice,” a pedagogical blockbuster that has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Portuguese. Inanimate Alice: Episode Six – The Last Gas Station was the 2016 Honorable Mention for the Robert Coover Prize. She has been the driving force behind a variety of workshops, programs, initiatives, and more to support developing the future of e-lit. Pullinger developed Ambient Literature Project. She also co-wrote the 2020 scholarly book: Ambient Literature Towards a New Poetics of Situated Writing and Reading Practices. Pullinger has brought the concept of electronic literature to tens of thousands of people, including the UK Prime Minister, through the “Letters to an Unknown Soldier” Project.

Kate Pullinger has supported ELO conferences and has advised ELO throughout the decades. She is also an editorial director of “The Writing Platform” that since 2013 is a wonderful digital resource of knowledge about digital storytelling for writers.

Her most recent digital fiction, “Breathe,” a ghost story that knows where you are, is available for free on your phone. It was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2019. She also wrote “Jellybone,” a novel for smartphones in 10 episodes.

According to the judges,

“Kate Pullinger’s fictional explorations of digital media for expressive purposes challenges the rhetoric of transparency in favor of a storytelling practice that brings together enjoyment and reflection. Her continued combination of poetic imagination and digital media education has achieved a broad public engagement with the constraints and affordances of electronic literature.”

She is Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University as well as Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI).

ELO is grateful to Kate for elevating and extending the art of digital writing, bringing it to new communities of readers and writers!