The Electronic Literature is pleased to welcome its newest Board Member Anastasia Salter. Anastasia has most recently served as an editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3 and brings expertise on interactive games, software platforms and much more.
Her full bio follows.
 
During the month of April, the USA celebrates National Poetry Month, a literary celebration inaugurated by theAcademy of American Poets in 1996. To join the celebrations, the Electronic Literature Organization and I ♥ E-Poetry will be publishing a calendar (below) to highlight e-poetry performance and publication events from around the world.
The ELC3 Bot will be featuring 54 works of e-poetrypublished in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3.
Don’t know what e-poetry is? Read Leonardo Flores’ definition.
The calendar below will be updated regularly during the month of April. To add your events, publications, performances, etc to the calendar, please contact Leonardo Flores at leonardo.flores at upr.edu.
Electronic Literature Collection, vol. 3
Announcing the publication of the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, which launched today at an event at the Stedman Art Gallery at Rutgers University, Camden. This third volume features 114 works from 26 countries in 13 languages. The latest collection, drawn from over 500 submitted and solicited works, represents a wide range of forms and styles, including poem generators, bots, interactive fiction, mobile apps, and more.
According to co-editor Anastasia Salter, “With the ELC3, we saw an opportunity to expand the common definitions of electronic literature to embrace new frontiers in mobile, gaming, and experimental art produced by communities working outside of traditional academic and literary spaces.â€
The features works languages include: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, and Swedish. These innovative works hail from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the United States.
As a snapshot of the field in this moment, the collection is designed to feature new and established voices in handcrafted HTML or computer-generated verse. Â The works feature stunning visuals, engaging interaction, and immersive environs, stretching the boundaries of the possible for literary endeavors.
ELC3 was edited by Stephanie Boluk, Leonardo Flores, Jacob Garbe, and Anastasia Salter with the assistance of an international advisory board.
This evening’s event at Rutgers-Camden marks the publication of the online version.  The physical copy (on a USB drive) will be released at our international conference in Victoria this summer.
See all three of the collections here: http://collection.eliterature.org
info:http://4humanities.org/
Your submission to this contest should answer such questions as: Why is studying the humanities–e.g., history, literature, languages, philosophy, art history, media history, and culture–important to you? To society? How would you convince your parents, an employer, a politician, or others that there is value in learning the humanities?
Who:Â Enter if you are an undergraduate or graduate student, an individual or team, from any nation.
What: Your submission will be judged by an international panel of distinguished judges for message, quality, and impact no matter your medium or format. Possible submissions include: essay (less than 2,000 words), video, digital work, poster, cartoon, song, art, short story, interview. See our Contest Kit for ideas, resources, and tools.
*Special note for digital artists: the contest encourages submissions in any format or medium, including digital or online ones.
Instructors and Educational Leaders: Want to organize a “creativity workshop†to incubate submissions by your students? See Workshops and Contest Kit for ideas. 4Humanities.org will create an online showcase specifically for your students’ work.
When:Â Submissions by March 1, 2016.
Prizes:Â Winners will receive the following awards, and will be published on the 4Humanities.org site:
– See more at: http://4humanities.org/contest/#sthash.IYRpaaid.dpuf
The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following two prestigious awards, “The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature†and “The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature.â€
“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 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 “Honorary 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 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 “Honorary 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
Deadlines
Nomination Submissions Period: Â February 1-February 28, 2016
Jury Deliberations: Â February 29-April 15, 2016
Award Announcement: Â ELO Conference Banquet, Victoria, B.C., June 11, 2016
For more information about the Coover Award, contact Maria Mencia, Co-Chair, The Electronic Literature Organization 2016 International Prize, mariamencia2@gmail.com; for more information about the Hayles Award, contact Rob Wittig, Co-Chair, The Electronic Literature Organization 2016 International Prize, wit@robwit.net.
10-12 June 2016
University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C.
Deadline for Scholarly Activities & Media Art Festival Works: November 15, 2015
Click here for the Submissions Form
At the annual conference held in Bergen, Norway in August 2015, ELO explored “the end(s) of electronic literature,†construed broadly as the contours, edges, and boundaries of the field and practice. This year the ELO 2016 Conference & Media Art Festival asks now, What’s next? What investigations, interventions, and creations lie beyond the horizons of born digital writing?
“Next Horizons,†the ELO 2016 Conference & Media Art Festival, looks to answer these questions with the intentional connection, integration, and expansion of electronic literature into the Digital Humanities through a partnership between the Electronic Literature Organization and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). ELO 2016 takes place at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, B.C. where over 750 scholars convene each year at DHSI to learn and expand their knowledge of DH tools, methods, and criticism. Taking place from 10-12 June and co-chaired by Drs. Dene Grigar and Ray Siemens, ELO 2016 will feature critical papers and artistic works of electronic literature. Additionally, because collocating the conference and art festival within DHSI presents the unique opportunity for collaborations between the two communities that may result in new knowledge about electronic literature and DH, it also offers opportunities––new formats and approaches to the conference––that take advantage of this affordance.
Opportunities for Participation
ELO 2016 emphasizes both scholarship and creative activities. All events will be peer-reviewed and juried by scholars and artists with expertise in the specific area reflected in the topic or method. Comments will be sent to all who submit a proposal or work. For more information, contact Dene Grigar, President, ELO, dgrigar@mac.com.
Read more CFP: ELO 2016: Next Horizons (11/15/15; 6/10-12/16) Victoria, B.C.
ELO is proud to sponsor Plataformas de la imaginación in Mexico City! (October 2015-January 2016)
Plataformas de la imaginación is the first initiative in Mexico carried out to present the current state, the historic trajectory, and the aesthetic variety of electronic literature produced around the world. In consonance with the literary, interdisciplinary, artistic and technological avant-gardes at an international level, this project aims to place electronic literature in the central discussion of the artistic agendas in general, and that of digital culture in particular. The various events comprising the project will be held in Mexico City, and include multiple activities with the support of prestigious Mexican institutions.
The activities of Plataformas de la Imaginación include three exhibits at Universum-Museo de Ciencias (universum.unam.mx), Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco (tlatelolco.unam.mx) and Centro de Cultura Digital (centroculturadigital.mx); a handful of interventions and live performances in Casa del Lago Juan José Arreola (casadellago.unam.mx); the world premiere of Eugenio Tisselli’s new piece will take place in Palacio de Bellas Artes (palacio.bellasartes.gob.mx). Additionally, an international symposium will be held at Sala Carlos Chávez of the Centro Cultural Universitario (cultura.unam.mx) featuring conferences by invited artists, critics, and scholars, both national and international.
Artist Judd Morrissey’s augmented reality performance Saturday concluded a week-long conference in Norway, ELO’s second international conference held outside the United States. Â Running August 4 through 7, with pre-conference workshops days before and Saturday’s poetry performance after, the ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature was one of the largest ever with 194 attendees from around the world.
Hosted at the University of Bergen (UiB), the conference spanned six venues, featuring panel presentations, performances, and five gallery exhibitions.  The group of international artists and scholars gathered to discuss the state of the art of electronic literature and to imagine what comes next. The complete schedule is online here.  (Also, see the ELO 2015 Facebook group).
The program coordinator for the conference was Jill Walker Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen and the program coordinator for ELO2015, and the conference chair was ELO co-founder Scott Rettberg,  also a professor of digital culture at UiB. Roderick Coover, Director of the MFA Program in Film and Media Arts at Temple University, was the conference’s Artistic Chair.
In five exhibitions included:
More information about exhibitions and other open events: http://www.uib.no/nb/fg/elektronisklitteratur/90342/en-festival-elektronisk-litteratur-elo2015
At the end of the conference, two major prizes were awarded:Â N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature, which was awarded to Sandy Baldwin for his book The Internet Unconscious, and the Robert Coover Prize, which was awarded to Samantha Gorman and Robert Coover for their interactive novella app Pry.
The next ELO Conference will be held in 2016 at the University of Victoria.
More details about the conference, including photos and videos, and details will follow. Congratulations and thanks to all who participated and made this possible.
At the close of the international conference in Bergen, Norway, the Electronic Literature Organization is happy to announce the winners of the 2015 ELO Prizes.  The Robert Coover Prize goes to Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro for their interactive app novella Pry.  The N. Katherine Hayles Award goes to Sandy Baldwin: The Internet Unconscious: On the Subject of Electronic Literature.
Instituted in 2014, these two awards are the top honors the organization awards, and these two winning works stand a top a field of extraordinary contributions from the past year.
Sandy Baldwin’s monograph epitomizes the pinnacle of scholarship in the field. The site for Baldwin’s book, explains,
There is electronic literature that consists of works, and the authors and communities and practices around such works. This is not a book about that electronic literature. It is not a book that charts histories or genres of this emerging field, not a book setting out methods of reading and understanding. The Internet Unconscious is a book on the poetics of net writing, or more precisely on the subject of writing the net. By ‘writing the net’, Sandy Baldwin proposes three ways of analysis: 1) an understanding of the net as a loosely linked collocation of inscriptions, of writing practices and materials ranging from fundamental TCP/IP protocols to CAPTCHA and Facebook; 2) as a discursive field that codifies and organizes these practices and materials into text (and into textual practices of reading, archiving, etc.), and into an aesthetic institution of ‘electronic literature’; and 3) as a project engaged by a subject, a commitment of the writers’ body to the work of the net.
The Internet Unconscious describes the poetics of the net’s “becoming-literary,” by employing concepts that are both technically-specific and poetically-charged, providing a coherent and persuasive theory. The incorporation and projection of sites and technical protocols produces an uncanny displacement of the writer’s body onto diverse part objects, and in turn to an intense and real inhabitation of the net through writing. The fundamental poetic situation of net writing is the phenomenology of “as-if.” Net writing involves construal of the world through the imaginary.
The story app Pry transforms the narrative experience of reading by bringing in stunning visuals and captivating touch-based interaction. The Website for the innovative interactive novella Pry reads,
Six years ago, James – a demolition expert – returned from the Gulf War. Explore James’ mind as his vision fails and his past collides with his present. PRY is a book without borders: a hybrid of cinema, gaming, and text. At any point, pinch James’ eyes open to witness his external world or pry apart the text of his thoughts to dive deeper into his subconscious. Through these and other unique reading interactions, unravel the fabric of memory and discover a story shaped by the lies we tell ourselves: lies revealed when you pull apart the narrative and read between the lines.
Honorable Mention for the Coover Prize went to Daniel Howe and John Cayley’s “The Readers Project / How It Is in Common Tongues.†Also, shortlisted were:  K. Reed Petty’s “Belated,â€Â Caitlin Fisher’s “Everyone at this party is Dead/Cardamom of the Dead,†and  Patrick Jagoda’s “The Portal | The Sandbox.â€
Honorable Mention for the Hayles Prize went to Lori Emerson for Reading Writing Interfaces (Minnesota). Also, shortlisted were Jessica Pressman’s Digital Modernism (Oxford), Anastasia Salter and John Murray’s Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT), and Brian Kim Stefans’ “Against Desire†(electronic book review).
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 $1000 annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. The prize comes 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. The Coover Prize was judged by Jim Andrews, Brian Kim Stefans, and Jason Lewis.
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 $1000 annual prize aims to recognize excellence in the field. The prize comes 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. The Hayles Prize was judged by Manuel Portela, Will Luers, and Maria Mencia.
Literary Advisory Board member Rob Wittig coordinated the judging process on both prizes this year.  Judges for the Coover Award included Jim Andrews, Brian Kim Stefans, and Jason Lewis. Judges for the Hayles Award included Manuel Portela, Will Luers, and Maria Mencia.
The Search for Electronic Literature Leads to the CELL Project
For Immediate Release
— Morgantown, WV
Announcing Cell Project, a new multi-database search for information on electronic literature, created by the Electronic Literature Organization in collaboration with 10 research centers around the world.
The Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL) is an open access, non-commercial resource offering centralized access to literary databases, archives, and institutional programs in the literary arts and scholarship, with a focus on electronic literature.
The purpose of CELL is to better identify works as literary and make the evolving field of born (and genetically) digital writing visible on a global scale. The project will develop communities and best practices in research in born digital literature.
According to Project Leader Sandy Baldwin, “For the first time, users can get a view of the entire field and ask critical research questions. As the database evolves, it will become the go-to site for discoveries in electronic literature. We will research unrecognized aspects of the field, illuminate global issues, and map the ‘literariness’ of electronic literature.”
Although the search engine is Open Access, the content of the databases is edited according to scholarly standards. That editorial oversight will make the CELL site a valuable resource for students of electronic literature.
More than an “e-lit Google,†CELL offers a “tool for curated, international research into digital literature,†according to Baldwin.
The consortium will draw upon the following data centers:
The project was sponsored by these partners along with the National Endowment for the Humanities. The management of the project is coordinated by the Center for Literary Computing at West Virginia University, and the technical development takes place at NT2 Lab in Montreal.
By the ELO 2015 Conference in Bergen, up to six sites will be connected to the search.
For more information, contact Sandy Baldwin sbaldwin66 at gmail
