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2025 ELO Awards

ELO is excited to announce the winners of the 2025 Electronic Literature Awards.  These awards were coordinated by. Alinta Krauth and Jason Nelson.  ELO gives 4 juried awards that come with a cash prize and the esteem of the international e-lit community.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

Judges:  Stephanie Strickland,  Lai-Tze Fan,  Maria Engberg
Winner:  Bertrand Gervais

Bertrand Gervais is a Professor in the Literary Studies Department at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). He is the Director of Figura, the Research Center on Textuality and the Imaginary, and of NT2, the Research Laboratory on Hypermedia Art and Literature. From 2015 to 2024 he served as the Canada Research Chair in Digital Arts and Literatures. During his career he participated in and supported The CELL Project for the Electronic Literature Organization. He also organized a brilliant ELO conference in Montreal.

Bertrand’s career, spanning more than 40 years of contributions to scholarship in digital artforms, has been foundational in the field of digital literary arts, semiotics of the web, and digital aesthetics. As cofounder of the NT2 laboratory, Bertrand not only established key research and documentation methodologies but cemented the bridge between Francophone research in the field and world-wide initiatives. Under his direction, the partnership Littérature Québécoise Mobile revolutionized the Web presence of the literary community of Francophone Canada for the benefit of creators and the linguistic minority publishing industry.

Bertand’s contributions and efforts toward international, interuniversity, and interdisciplinary collaboration have proved essential for several generations of researchers, artists, and digital creators. As co-founder of the 1P1 Laboratory, which specializes in extended realities, Bertrand’s work continues to have an impact on current and future research, revolutionizing the spheres of scientific engagement with the arts, technologies, and research-design.

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The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

Judges: Dene Grigar, Mariusz Pisarski,  Monique Tschofen

Winner:
The Culture of Neural Networks: Synthetic Literature and Art in (not only) the Czech and Slovak Context, by Karel  Piorecký and Zuzana Husárová

A fascinating and timely perspective on art, neural networks, and AI, offered by scholars from regions where the ideas of the Golem, the robot, and alchemical enhancement of the human spirit have long been created, practiced, and discussed—even around family dinner tables. This Czech and Slovak lineage lends the work a unique historical and philosophical angle. Piorecký and Husárová  temper the current wave of enthusiasm and uncritical faith in AI in a productive manner, offering a balanced view on creativity and AI. The body of knowledge and artistic practice that serves as context breathes fresh air into the global conversation on synthetic creativity. By highlighting voices and examples from continental and Central European art and science, the authors enrich the field of electronic literature, introducing underexplored contexts, names, and traditions that should benefit researchers and creators worldwide.

Runner Up
The New Legibility, by Theo Ellin Ballew

Beautifully designed, this highly witty, playful and meta-referential essay manages to both show and tell; an example of how interactive forms of scholarship can do things that printed pages cannot. With an interface that effectively uses hypertextual links, crossouts, and bubbles, Ballew deeply theorizes what legibility means in the context of the history of elite, disability, design, and the materiality of reading. This playful and insightful academic essay on the nature of text on the screen pays homage to the vernacular web of old and cult classics such as Grammatron. The meta-commentary is ironic and provocative, defining and enacting “static” text as “less legible,” while rendering mobile text as an expression of stability. As readers digest these turns of phrase and meaning, the text invites them to doodle on the screen, leaving their own mark on the background of micro-lexias before proceeding to the next chunk of argumentation. User-friendly, with a backlink mechanism for visited lexias and a reset button, this small hypertext evokes alternative expressions of academic discourse.

Honorable Mention
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort’s Output: Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort’s Output: Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023 is an excellent resource and a milestone of scholarly research. Organized into 17 thematic sections, from conversations to literary forms to Tweets, along with detailed back matter (e.g., glossary, timeline), the book covers much ground necessary for understanding 200 different explorations with English-language “outputs” over the last 70 years. It is a monumental reference for students and scholars alike.

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

Judges:  Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang,  Florence Walker, Lyle Skains

WINNER: Espejo de Carne, by benjamin escalonilla godayol

The judges found Espejo de Carne delightfully visceral and weird, full of flavour and thoughtfulness. The narrative resonates intensely, and the music is used in a multiplicative effect to both heighten the text and encourage the reader to linger on particular passages. On its own, the text is compelling, well-written, a science-fiction-oriented dive into the reader/player’s “birth” as a cloned human, experiencing the rawness and newness of life, the universe, and everything. The presentation is curated, technically flawless, easing the reader/player into the interactivity even as they become engrossed in this story of themselves as duplicate, guided by interactions with their OG human. Techies may find the “electronic” in this work of electronic literature slow to develop, but we found the confluence of a strong narrative, an original voice, the seeding and layering of multiple modes and carefully considered interactivity to work beautifully to convey a story that manages to put the reader/player deeply, immersively into a character’s life without resorting to overt gameplay or gimmicks. Espejo de Carne‘s subtle use of choice, linkage, and multimedia place the reader/player firmly within an interesting and enjoyable interactive narrative.

RUNNER UP:

Happenings: A tragic-lyrical philosophical essay, by Monique Tschofen

This work is well-conceived, brilliantly executed, and quietly devastating, leaving the judges with a tangible heaviness, a precision-targeted burst of emotion. In a world that is all-too-often dismissive of sexual assault, Happenings constitutes a thoughtful and striking intervention. The judges were especially impressed by its commitment to keeping the reader/player uneasy – an impulse that never tipped over into gratuitous misery. Artistically, the work uses LLMs well, though such tools bring with them their own implications within a work positioned as a feminist text.  The use of Scalar for creative purposes is also to be commended, as the platform has primarily been deployed for pathways through scholarship; in this context it is an extremely apt foundation for a philosophical essay. Overall, the work is well-constructed and artfully conveyed.

Honourable Mention

BabyHex, by David Ciccoricco, Mez Breeze, and Marine Cone

BabyHex plays with the creative anthropomorphisation of gen-AI/LLMs using gen-AI, while simultaneously playing with the reader through the illusion of agency. The interface is polished and effective, conveying the contrary and possibly cursed nature of these interactions in a highly meaningful way.

Honourable Mention

Hunting and Gathering in Cyberspace, by Judy Malloy

The lyrical nature of “narrabase” fiction is on full display in this work, scrambling together the short lyrical pieces of text into an ever-shifting poetic narrative. There is also a nostalgic effect, a clunky inconvenience to the hyperlinked elements that reflects the experience of the nascent World Wide Web of the time. A work worth exploring, then and now.

The Maverick Award

Judge:  Rob Wittig and Christine Wilks

Winner: Jason Nelson

Jason Nelson is a prolific, bright, mischievous, and thought-provoking creator. The contact button on many of his interactive online works reveals two statements that capture the spirit of his decades of work.

“I make odd games / artworks / digital poems

You hate / love / are confused by what I make”

The confusion Jason’s work sparks is a generous, friendly confusion, hilarious and serious at the same time. Throughout decades of award winning work — work appearing on screens, in quirky physical objects, and stunning visuals projected onto huge architectural spaces — Jason has accurately assessed the norms and expectations of current digital culture. Then he has set about systematically breaking those norms and frustrating those expectations. The result is insight. And laughter. Jason’s work always shows you something you hadn’t witnessed before in digital culture, and inside yourself.

One of Jason’s superpowers is actually to see interfaces and platforms. These frameworks, once introduced, quickly become invisible. Their creators often wish them and design them to become invisible in order to hide the degree to which they extract our money and attention. Jason makes mischief with frameworks. His scribbly marks and simplified forms call into question slick, orderly, high-design. His games don’t follow the rules. He makes familiar keystrokes do unfamiliar things, and users rediscover the joy of curious clicking. The topics of the work are important, dealing with how humans relate to themselves, each other, and the earth.

He is a wonderful line-by-line writer. Just to quote a few project titles:

“Birds Still Warm from Flying,”
“Holiday Disaster Generator,”
“alarmingly these are not lovesick zombies,”
and “With Love from a Failed Planet.”

Jason’s upbringing amid the farms and ranches of Oklahoma reminds us of the roots of the term maverick, which in the American west meant an unbranded calf, cow, or steer who wanders away from the herd. Jason Nelson’s innovative wanderings are a great gift, and he richly deserves this award.

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Jean-Pierre Balpe Conference program now online

The full program of the conference titled “Jean-Pierre Balpe, (Meta-)Author: The Infinite Writing” is now online on the conference website, along with practical information: https://balpe2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/1 

The conference will take place near Paris, on the Condorcet Campus of the University of Paris 8, on 12-13 June 2025. It is open to all and free to attend, just send an email to erika.fulop@univ-tlse2.fr.

The event will be accompanied by an exhibition of Balpe’s works in The NEXT, to be launched at the conference. It will remain online as the Jean-Pierre Balpe Collection in The NEXT.

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Call for Nominations: 2025 ELO Awards

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following four prestigious awards:

  • The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,
  • The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature
  • The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award
  • The Maverick Award

2025 nominations are now open. Submit today. Nominations close on April 21, 2025 extended to May 9.

Winners will be announced at ELO 2025 during our in-person conference.

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. 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 certificate 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.

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 certificate 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.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online sources about the awardee’s achievements; 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. (No self-nominations for this award.)

The Maverick Award honors 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. (No self-nominations for this award.)

For more information about the Awards, contact Holly Slocum, at holly at eliterature.org.

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Conference Celebrating Jean-Pierre Balpe

Jean-Pierre Balpe, (Meta-)Author: The Infinite Writing
International Conference
12-13 June 2025
University of Paris 8, Campus Condorcet

Jean-Pierre Balpe, one of the first authors and theorists in France to take an interest in the creative literary potential of computers but still little known to the general public, has been working for almost half a century on the automatic generation of texts as a mode of literary creation that questions our assumptions about language, writing and literature. Over the years, he has closely followed the evolution of digital tools and environments, developing increasingly powerful generators on the one hand, and investing in digital social networks on the other, not only to publish some of the automatically generated poetic and narrative texts, but also to attribute them to fictional beings, pseudo- or heteronymous ‘profiles’. The latest version of his text-generation software, a symbolic artificial intelligence, which to our knowledge remains unique worldwide in terms of its scope and refinement, is based on a theory of meaning, language, and their relationship to the world, developed by Balpe from the questions raised in his attempts to model generative literary writing (Balpe 2000, 2021). It includes millions of pieces of linguistic data accumulated since the 1990s, as well as a grammar defined manually and perfected as the experiments progressed.

First a poet and literature teacher, author of teaching manuals and theoretical works on the teaching of poetry (Balpe 1974, 1980) as well as collections of poetry (Balpe 1975, 1985, 1990), Jean-Pierre Balpe discovered computers at the end of the 1970s at the school where he taught and immediately became interested in their linguistic and poetic potential. He became an adviser to the Ministry of Culture on the digital transition, proposed a ‘clandestine’ seminar at INALCO on the automatic text generation, and took part in the Alamo group (Atelier de Littérature Assistée par la Mathématique et les Ordinateurs) of the Oulipo movement from its inception in 1981. However, he soon left the group because he found its approach to text generation limited. In 1987, he published Roman [Novel], a story generator for use in the classroom, accompanied by a manual entitled Initiation à la génération de textes en langue naturelle: exemples de programmes en Basic (Balpe 1986, Centre national de documentation pédagogique 1987). In 1985, he was in charge of the ‘Labyrinthe du langage’ area of the Centre Pompidou exhibition Les Immatériaux, curated by Jean-Philippe Lyotard and Thierry Chaput, which left its mark on the history of new media art with its reflections on the entanglement between art, technology, science and society. He then joined the university, becoming director of the Hypermedia Department at Paris 8 and then co-director of CIREN (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches en Esthétiques Numériques) and CITU (Créations Interactives Transdisciplinaires Universitaires). While pursuing his theoretical and pedagogical work, he continued to develop his software and worked on numerous collaborative projects, notably with composer Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi and poets Joseph Guglielmi and Henri Deluy (Trois mythologies et un poète aveugle, 1997) and artists such as Michel Jaffrennou (Barbe-bleue, 1998), Grégory Chatonsky (Capture, 2009), Miguel Chevalier (Herbarius 2059, 2009), and Orlan (ORLAN & ORLANoïde, 2018). At the end of the 1990s, her work also inspired a documentary by Hervé Nisic (Personne, 2000).

With the arrival of the Internet, Balpe quickly moved into cyberspace, creating hypertext fictions (Trajectoires, La Disparition du Général Proust) and a labyrinth of blogs where he mixed ‘human’ writing with generated texts. He also ventured into writing detective fiction – with automatically generated passages – questioning the society of the future under the effect of digital networks (La Toile, 1999). His website (now unavailable on the web and currently being rebuilt) has also developed as a constantly evolving space, with ‘mazes’ that allow pages of a novel and other potentially infinite series to be generated, right up to his ‘Posthumous Poems’. Finally, since the birth of social networks, he has been exploring the new spaces for communication and creation offered by Facebook and YouTube, extending his universe now called ‘Un Monde incertain’ [An Uncertain World] and continuing to write under the hijacked names of Proustian figures (Antoine Elstir, Maurice Roman…, and above all, Rachel Charlus). After experimenting with phototext, Balpe now explores video editing with ‘natural’, archival and synthetic images and voices, and even into musical composition with non-professional tools. The generations respond to each other and clash in this ‘work’ (a concept that should also be questioned), in the form of ‘battles’ [Combats] between ChatGPT and Balpe’s generator. Finally, despite his observation that ‘The book is the whole problem…’ (Balpe 2001), we also discover a fascination for the book object and its history in the blog Ma bibliothèque XVI, XVII et XVIIIe siècle.

On the whole, the automatic generation of texts and personal writing, the fictional and the autobiographical, the poetic and the theoretical, the codex and the digital continue to coexist and enrich one another in the Balpean universe. Jean-Pierre Balpe’s work and thinking raise a number of highly topical issues, not only in the field of literature but more generally in the relationship between creativity, reception, machines and audiences.

This conference, organized as part of a project funded by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord, with the support of the CEMTI, PLH, CELLAM, and Paragraphe laboratories, and in partnership with the Electronic Literature Lab and the Electronic Literature Organization, aims to encourage and bring together for the first time research and reflection on and around this innovative work and thought, with its elusive perimeters and its constant questioning of writing in all its forms.

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CFP: ELO25 @ 25: Toronto (July 11-13; ext deadline Jan. 15, 2025)

hands overlayed over a faint document with an orange heart glowing on the shadow on the hands

Organizers: Caitlin Fisher (York)  and Lai-Tze Fan (Waterloo)

Locations: Toronto, Canada and Waterloo, Canada

For its 25th anniversary, Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is holding an international in-person conference and media arts festival themed “ELO25 @ 25: Love Letters to the Past and Future” from July 10-13, 2025. ELO25 @ 25 is a joint hosting between the University of Waterloo and York University. Optional workshops will happen July 10 at the University of Waterloo in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada. The main conference will happen July 11-13 at York University in Toronto, Canada. We are also excited to announce that we are partnering with Vector Media Arts Festival to share attendees of our respective media art festivals and to collaborate in select events.

The ELO has always been a future-focused organization, with a deep understanding of both digital and analogue histories and processes.  And for 25 years the Electronic Literature Organization has nurtured born-digital experimentation. E-lit is an expansive, interdisciplinary arena bridging literature, technology, art, design, and performance, and there is no better time to learn from ELO’s foundational histories as we collectively move toward society’s literary and technological futures.

Honoring this, we encourage submissions that delve into the rich histories of e-lit and of our own organization. Affection, critique, desire, nostalgia, honoring pioneers. At the same time, an anniversary is a moment to look forward, so we also solicit work that speculates on possible futures–future e-lit, future technologies to support literatures, ELO2050, new speculative avant-gardes, e-lit as a world-building practice. We want your ideas around archives and what we save, futureproofing, accidental futures, equity, steampunk, future libraries and practices, e-lit for technologies that do not yet exist. We welcome approaches to how e-lit also brings Arts-based questions, frameworks, and practices to technological applications and developments. How might our practices inform future tools? Literacies? Audiences? We also welcome work that stretches the boundaries of where e-lit might connect that we don’t yet see represented widely in the field, from physics and health to data science and misinformation. Join us as we ask what the ELO has learned and ponder what the next 25 years will bring.

Website: elo25.org

Contact e-mail: elo25@eliterature.org

Submission portal open November 5 (accessible via conference website)

Types of submissions (deadline for all: January 5 January 15, 2025 AOE)

Individuals may NOT appear in the final program more than twice as lead authors/artists/speakers, but may participate in program events more than twice.

Papers

300-word abstracts for 15-min papers. In a separate document, please include 200-300 word bios for each speaker. There will be an opportunity to submit full papers early for consideration for inclusion in published proceedings. Experimental forms encouraged.

Lightning talks 150-word abstracts for 5-min talks. In a separate document, please include 200-300 word bios for each speaker.

Panels with Papers or Lightning talks + Discussion

Proposed panel with 150-word abstracts of three to four 15-min papers or five to six 5-min lightning talks. In a separate document, please include 200-300 word bios for each speaker.

Artist Talks on their Electronic Literature/Media Artworks

An opportunity for e-lit practitioners to discuss their own works in the context of a 15 minute conference slot (as distinct from a performance or reading of that work–if you primarily wish to read or perform, please choose the performance option instead). 300-word abstract and 200-300 word bio.

In-person Workshops

1-hour workshop intended for hands-on interaction, discussion, and instruction on a topic relevant to e-lit. In addition to a description of the workshop and its goals, please specify: (1) how many participants are imagined (between 15-30) and (2) what tools and A/V you will need to run the workshop. All workshops will be held at the University of Waterloo on July 10, 2025.

In-person E-lit and Media Art Readings/Performances

300-word abstracts for each reading/performance, including tech requirements (if any) and a 200-300 word bio. We strongly encourage including a link to the work or detailed outline/imaging.

In-person Works of Electronic Literature/Media Artworks for the Exhibition

300-word abstracts for each artwork,  200-300 word bios for each artist. We strongly encourage including a link to finished or in-process work or detailed outline/imaging.

Curatorial pitches: do you have a vision for curating a specific set of existing e-lit works or soliciting new works that might work together to advance the conference theme? If so, we have limited capacity to support invited curators. Please do not use the portal – reach out individually to us at elo25@eliterature.org with your ideas.

About Waterloo

The University of Waterloo is a leading global research-intensive university, renowned for entrepreneurship and innovation. It has been voted the #1 most innovative university in Canada for 30 of the last 32 years. At Waterloo, ELO 2025 Co-Chair Dr. Lai-Tze Fan directs the U&AI Lab. ELO25 @ 25 workshop attendees will be hosted at Waterloo on Thursday, July 10, 2024. A local train connects Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo (via Toronto Union GO Train Station to Kitchener GO Train Station).

About York

Located in Toronto, Canada, York University is empowered by a welcoming and diverse community of over 50,000 students, with a uniquely global perspective. It is the current home of the ELO. At York, ELO 2025 Co-Chair and ELO President Dr. Caitlin Fisher directs the Immersive Storytelling Lab and ELO25 @ 25 will be supported by a range of units engaged with e-lit practices.

About Toronto

Toronto is the largest and most diverse city in Canada and a major cultural hub. Over 160 languages are spoken in the city. Toronto’s Pearson airport connects to cities around the world.

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ELO Welcomes 3 New Board Members

ELO is delighted to announce the addition of three new Board Members: Lyle Skains, Shanmugapriya T, and Zach Whalen.  Each will contribute an extensive set of skills, expertise, and creativity to the all-volunteer board.  At the same time, we say farewell and thanks to outgoing Board Members Anna Nacher and Mark Sample who have contributed so much to our community.  ELO President Caitlin Fisher said to the new members, “We are thrilled to have these new Board Members  join us and look forward to working with them. I want to express gratitude for their willingness to serve and admiration for the talents they bring. ” ELO Board Members serve on three-year renewable terms.

Below are biographies of our newest members! The full Board is here.

Lyle Skains smiles into the camera.
Image by Grafic House – www.grafichouse.co.uk – 07903809884

Lyle Skains is an award-winning researcher and creative practitioner in Creative Digital Writing and Science Communication. She conducts practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, publishing digital and transmedia narratives, and how these can be used for health and science communication. Her recent digital fiction includes ‘No World 4 Tomorrow’ for the You & CO2 project, and ‘Only, Always, Never’ for the Infectious Storytelling project; both works were designed to effect social change. She is the founder of Wonderbox Publishing, which publishes speculative digital fiction, aiming to explore innovations in digital and online publishing and creativity. She is also the coordinator of the New Media Writing Prize, and an editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 4. Her digital fiction can be found at lyleskains.com; articles in Convergence, Digital Creativity, and Computers and Composition; and books with Cambridge UP (Digital Authorship), Emerald (Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health and Science Communication) and Bloomsbury (Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction). ‘Neverending Stories’ was awarded the N. Katherine Hayles Prize for Criticism in Electronic Literature in 2023 by the Electronic Literature Organization. Currently an Associate Professor in Literary Media and Health & Science Communication at Bournemouth University, she has demonstrated remarkable engagement within the electronic literature community by actively participating in numerous initiatives.

Shanmugapriya T standing at the bottom of a staircase beneath blossoming trees.

Shanmugapriya T is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Digital Literature in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. She was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) (2022–2024) and an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University, UK (2020–2021). During her postdoctoral work at Lancaster and UTSC,  she applied digital humanities techniques to study environmental degradation, particularly water systems in Coimbatore, South India, from British colonial times to the present. She created an interactive map using Leaflet and ArcGIS to track the transformation of water tanks in British India’s Coimbatore region and developed Lost Water, Remainscape!, a digital poetry that blends 3D environments, maps, and oral testimonies. She curated her students’ digital-born creative works on her website. Shanmu’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of digital humanities, digital environmental studies, and digital literature, focusing on South Asia, colonial and postcolonial studies, text mining, mapping, and digital-born creative works. She earned her Ph.D. in Indian English Literature and Digital Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India. She is an interim executive committee and Governing Body member of DHARTI, as well as a Research Fellow and member of the Electronic Literature Organization, and was a SPARC Fellow at Lancaster University (2019). She is one of the Peer Reviews Editors of the journal Digital Humanities Quarterly. Shanmu curated the first Indian Electronic Literature Anthology Volume 1 along with Nirmala Menon, Justy Joesph and Deborah Sutton.

Zach Whalen standing in the foreground, behind him a tree-lined path to a building

Zach Whalen is an Associate Professor at the University of Mary Washington where he teaches courses on creative coding, game studies, comics, and electronic literature. He is the co-editor (with Chris Foss and Jonathan W. Gray) of Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives and (with Laurie N. Taylor) of Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games. He is completing a scholarly monograph on computer-generated literary and artistic books. In addition to research and writing about electronic literature, Zach is a practitioner of computational creativity including tiny digital poems in Taper, several dozen artistic or literary Twitter bots (all now defunct), and the graphic novel An Arthrogram. He is also an annual contributor to NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) and a member of the Community Advisory Board for If, Then: Technology and Poetics.

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Announcing the 2024 ELO Awards

(from coordinators Jason Nelson and Alinta Krauth)

We are very excited to say the ELO Awards have just been announced at this year’s conference. We will be posting the judges comments, links and other details on the conference and ELO websites soon. But we wanted to announce the winner’s names now! So here we go:

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award:

Winner:
Dene Grigar
Videos honouring Dene: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
Luesebrink Judges: Stephanie Strickland, Maria Engberg, Lai-Tze Fan

The Robert Coover Award for a work of Electronic Literature:

Winner:
Halim Madi – Borderline
Runner Up:
Margot Machado – Seeing
Honourable Mentions:
Lee Tusman – Exocolony
The Marino family – Unboxing: Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House
Fernando Montes Vera – VideoDreams
Robert Coover Award Judges: Lyle Skains, Florence Walker, Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang

The Maverick Award:

Winner: Allison Parrish.
The Maverick Award Judges: Talan Memmott, Deena Larsen, Chris Funkhouser, Erik Zepka

The N Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature:

Winner:
Hannes Bajohr – Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: On Machine Learning and the Reading Expectations Towards Literary and Non-Literary Writing
Runner-up:
Malthe Stavning Erslev – Machine Mimesis: Electronic Literature at the Intersection of Human and Computer Imitation
Honorable mentions:
Alessandro Ludovico – Tactical Publishing: Using Senses, Software, and Archives in the Twenty-First Century
Simone Murray – The Short Story in the Age of the Internet
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CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: 2024 ELO AWARDS

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following four prestigious awards:

  • The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,
  • The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature
  • The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award
  • The Maverick Award

EXTENDED DEADLINE

2024 nominations are currently open through April 15, 2024 April 30, 2024 and you are welcome to self-nominate for the Robert Coover and N. Katherine Hayles awards. Submit your nomination here.

Winners will be announced at ELO 2024 during our online conference.

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. 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.

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.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online sources about the awardee’s achievements; 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. (No self-nominations for this award.)

The Maverick Award honors 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. (No self-nominations for this award.)

For more information about the Awards, contact Holly Slocum, at holly at eliterature.org.

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Register for the ELO UnConference (Jan 18-19, 2024)

ELO Conference: Access Works
January 18-19, 2024
online

Please join in on our (Un)conference, Access Works! Two days of informal, interactive discussions and workshops to find ways to extend access to electronic literature for all. We will be global and online—come and join the discussion when you are awake!

Electronic literature uses games, images, videos, sounds, links, navigation, and other digital qualities as an essential part of the reading experience. What can we do to make these experiences more accessible: financially, technologically, physically, internationally?

Registration is free with a current Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) membership.

Register for the UnConference

Program

This will be a 24-hour (un)conference with world-wide moderators. See the full schedule: tinyurl.com/ELoJan18-192024. Below are some highlights of what there is to look forward to.

Keynote Interactive Discussions

Access to and from Commercialized Platforms

Lai-Tze Fan will explore the asymmetry of access and accessibility in commercialized computational platforms, including those used to create and support electronic literature. As more and more platforms are restricting users’ and third-party developers’ access to code, databases, and application programming interfaces, Fan discusses social implications that may include misinformation, copyright restrictions, and biases in communication and technological literacy. What kinds of information and knowledge may still be accessed?

Barriers to Electronic Literature Works in India

Shanmugapriya T will address barriers in electronic works within the South Asian realm, with a focus on India. Shanmugapriya T is a Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (HCS) at University of Toronto. implications that may include misinformation, copyright restrictions, and biases in communication and technological literacy. What kinds of information and knowledge may still be accessed?

 

Virtual Tours

Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab

microsoft.com/en-us/inclusive-tech-lab

During the tour we will share the history of the lab, explore how we intentionally designed the space to be accessible, discuss our inclusive design process, and showcase a selection of Microsoft’s accessibility hardware and software products.

Electronic Literature Lab’s The NEXT

the-next.eliterature.org

During the tour we will explore the accessible features and works of The NEXT and discuss best practices for accessibility in sharing, archiving, and preserving electronic literature.

Demonstrations

Internet in a box

An innovative hard drive to share knowledge and works in places without the internet.

Inky

inky.com

A free open-source authoring platform for writing branching narratives and dynamic text. The talk will be informed by the research and writing that went into Creating Playable Stories with Ink and Inky, an online open-education resource.

The Worlding Difference Knowledge Platform

revisioncentre.ca

Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice will showcase the Worlding Difference Knowledge Platform, a cutting-edge, web-based platform featuring art and scholarship from the Bodies in Translation (BIT) research grant. This lively, digital born, multimedia teaching and learning platform will test the boundaries of multimedia scholarship and academic publishing.

Workshops and Roundtables

Tangled Arts

tangledarts.org

Tangled Arts will lead a workshop on Social Media Accessibility noting the various areas that need attention when creating accessible digital platforms (screen reader compatibility, alt text, image descriptions, audio descriptions, etc.)

Innovative Teaching Techniques for Electronic Literature

By sharing ways in which Electronic Literature lends itself to pedagogical experimentation, this roundtable will allow instructors to learn from one another.

Co-authoring Accessible Bits

ELO’s guide to Accessibility and Spreading the Word with Astrid Ensslin. Accessible Bits is a draft proposal for ensuring electronic literature works are accessible. Electronic literature writers love to play around the edges and push the boundaries of software. How can we engage in innovative practices while ensuring access? How can we spread the word about access and electronic literature? How can we increase visibility through documentation, analysis, and scholarship? Who can we partner with and reach out to?

But wait, there’s more!

We’ll also engage in discussions around low-vision designs (Patrick Lichty), AI issues (Vinicius Marquet), linguistic experiments (David Van Duzer) and so much more! Look forward to the full schedule releasing on December 18, 2023.

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CFP: ELO 2024 (Feb 15; July 18-21, 2024)

Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) Conference and Media Festival

2024 – Virtual – Call for Proposals – #ELOnline

SUBMIT NOW!

We invite submissions for presentations, performances, and exhibition pieces at the annual Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival (ELO), to be hosted fully online July 18-21, 2024 by a team based at the University of Central Florida with collaborators around the world.

ELOnline 2024’s theme is (Un)linked. We particularly encourage submissions that center on the web as a contested platform of community and computational creativity, with attention to both dystopian shifts (such as the slow demise of the platform formerly known as Twitter) and hopeful futures. As part of this theme, we invite submissions across all formats considering the 15th-ish anniversary of Twine and more broadly exploring the trajectories of hypertext and the web as a site of electronic literature making, community, and futures. Topics of particular interest include:

  • Utopian and Dystopian Imaginaries
  • Platform Deaths and Migrations
  • Sustainable Electronic Literature
  • Queer, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Pedagogies and Practices
  • Computational Creativity and Generative AI
  • Twine and Hypertext Fictions
  • Critical Making and E-Lit in Digital Humanities
  • Literary Games and Interactive Fiction Futures
  • Mixed, Alternate, Augmented, and Virtual Realities

Submissions are welcome in the following categories:

  • Panels. Panels or roundtables of 3 to 6 participants are welcome. We encourage groups proposing panels to prioritize engaging formats, rather than simply organizing a series of long talks. Panels will be scheduled live on Zoom in 75 minute blocks. For panel submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word abstract of the session, anonymized for peer review.
  • Individual Talks. Individual talks (10 to 12 minutes) will be organized into sessions based on common themes. For an individual talk, please provide a 250-300 word individual abstract, anonymized for peer review.
  • Workshops. Workshops focused on specific skills, technologies, platforms, and techniques of interest to practitioners and/or scholars of electronic literature are welcome. For a workshop, please provide a 250-300 word individual abstract, anonymized for peer review, and any details about needs or timeslot requirements.
  • Performances. Due to the online-only format of the conference, all performances should be suitable for Zoom, and participants are particularly encouraged to make use of the distant modality and interface as part of their performance. For performance submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions and structure of the piece. Statements should be anonymized for peer review. Performers should keep in mind the constraints of a 10 to 15-minute time slot.
  • Online Exhibition. Due to the online-only format of the conference, all exhibition pieces must be designed for web deployment using web standard technologies and hosted on UCF’s server space. We particularly encourage work engaging thoughtfully with the constraints and affordances of the web, and pointing towards the past, present, and imagined futures of hypertext literature. For exhibition submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions and structure of the piece. If available, please provide a URL of the work or a demonstration of the concept in-progress.
  • Experimental Track. The experimental track invites participants to propose alternative platforms and modalities for sessions, ranging from text chat to in-game meetings. Hosts of experimental track sessions are responsible for access and moderation to their proposed platform for the duration of their sessions, and are asked to consider the environmental impact and accessibility of their approach as a means for exploring future conference modalities and opportunities. For experimental track proposals, please provide a 350 – 500-word abstract of the session, anonymized for peer review.

Our submission portal at https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/ are open January 1st, 2024 through February 15th, 2024. Notice of acceptances will be distributed by March 15h.

All participants will be invited to submit a longer proceedings paper for publication in the UCF STARS repository (indexed via Google Scholar); however, this type of submission is not required. All conference sessions will be recorded and made available open access in the UCF STARS Repository.

 

Cost and Impact

This fully online iteration of ELO is developed in response to concerns raised both within the community and more broadly regarding the environmental impact, accessibility, and affordability of academic conferences. Our approach is intended to reflect an intentional, impact-conscious, approach using established platforms (Zoom, Discord, and the STARS Repository) and minimizing cost both to the organizers and participants.

Membership is not required to submit to the conference. However, all conference participants will be required to join the ELO, with membership fees payable directly to the organization. There is no additional conference registration fee beyond dues: however, those able to do so are encouraged to donate to ELO in lieu of registration.

Questions?

Please direct all queries to the conference co-chairs: Anastasia Salter (anastasia@ucf.edu) and John Murray (jtm@ucf.edu) or exhibition and performance questions to Lyle Skains (lskains@bournemouth.ac.uk)