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CFP: ELO25 @ 25: Toronto (July 11-13; due Jan. 5, 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, 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)

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Announcing 2023 ELO Prize Winners

2023 ELO AWARDS

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

Winner: “Anonymous Animal ” by Everest Pipkin

From the jury statement: “This intricately crafted artwork offers a distinctive 15-minute durational browser poem that operates on an hourly cycle … This artwork attests to the power of electronic literature to provoke thought, evoke emotions, and offer unique insights into the human condition and our shifting relationships with technology.

______________________

Runner-up: “The (m)Otherhood of Meep (the bat translator)” by Alinta Krauth

From the jury statement: “This work sits at a perfect nexus of co-creation, algorithm-driven literature, and emergent text. That it is co-created not only with other humans, but primarily with another species altogether—bats—is truly remarkable … “The (m)Otherhood of Meep (the bat translator)” is a beautiful and meaningful convergence of science, literature, and human-computer interaction. It serves as an example of what amazing good we can do with our work.

­­_________________

Honorable Mention: “The Decameron 2.0” by The Decameron Collective:

Jolene Armstrong, Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joose, Kari Maaren, Shi-vawn Of-len, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Monique Tschofen

From the jury statement: “The Decameron 2.0” is a product of plague. Like Giovanni Boccaccio’s bebonic-plague narrative that inspired it, it is a work that arises from and conveys the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The “collective” creators co-created a storyworld that can be explored through 100 works of experimental multimedia poetry… “The Decameron 2.0” not only stands out as an artistic, fun, compelling, and highly affective world of electronic literature, but also as a historical record (an archive indeed) of women during the Covid-19 pandemic.

_______________________

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

Winner: “Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction” by Lyle Skains

From the jury statement: “The book is a granular exploration of both the evolution of digital fiction and its impact on (and positioning in) popular culture. The author’s focus on marginalized authors/creators, as well as reframing accepted aspects of digital fiction, sets their work apart. Skains does more than justice to a complex topic with her ambitious work spanning over half a century of digital literature development.”

____________________

Runner up: “Opera aperta: Italian Electronic Literature from the 1960s to the Present” by Emanuela Patti

From the jury statement: “The author methodically develops a theoretical framework based on Umberto Eco’s ‘open work’ concept and applies this framework to analyze a diverse range of literary and artistic forms. The book’s argument is deeply rooted in a thoughtful examination of the digital revolution in Italy and its transformative impact on avant-garde literary production.”

_________________

Honorable mention: “Girl Online” by Joanna Walsh

From the jury statement: “a profound exploration of the intricate dynamics of online identity with a direct focus on the experiences of women. The book delves into the challenges and opportunities that arise from the process of self-creation in the digital realm … The book’s strength lies in its ability to resonate on a deeply personal level while maintaining scholarly rigor.”

_____________________

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award.

Stephanie Strickland

The jury statement reads: “Stephanie Strickland is a renowned poet whose influence in the field of electronic literature cannot be overstated. Her for-midable critical and creative practices span decades, with pioneering work in hypertext, generative and multimodal digital formats … Strickland has cultivated and shaped the field of electronic literature as we know it today, growing a broader community of creative and critical practice, and inspiring others to appreciate, and often follow, these resonant lines of poetic inquiry and insight.”

Maverick Award

Deena Larsen

Deena Larsen has been a pioneer in electronic literature for over three decades.  From her first work Marble Springs to her most recent collaborations, she has been sculpting new forms of digital art.  Spanning genres from hypertext to interactive bots to e-poetry, Larsen’s extensive collection of works includes Andromeda and Eliza, Playing with Rose, Modern Moral Fairytales, and Firefly.  Dedicated to community building, since 2020, Larsen has been hosting Second Tuesday Salons and other events for ELO,  welcoming new members and creating new venues to explore and celebrate to creative projects and scholarship.  She has also co-hosted the first ever ELO Unconference and plans to host the second under the theme Access Works in January 2024, continuing her advocacy for a more inclusive and accessible e-lit world.  Larsen’s archive is at University of Maryland, where among other wonders, scholars can find a shower curtain on which she composed a hypertext. Larsen continues to find new ground, welcoming newcomers even as she discovers it.

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ELO Fellowship Call for Applications

ELO FELLOWSHIP CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
DEADLINE 15 MARCH

The ELO is continuing its expansion of scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of four graduate and early career Research & Creative Fellows for 2023, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one-year ELO membership. The awards will be announced at the ELO2023 Conference in Coimbra. 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 encyclopedic 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 celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for the benefit of our whole community. Therefore, we actively encourage applications from individuals who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic, ethnic, and language backgrounds. We ask all applicants to consult our ELO Code of Conduct: https://eliterature.org/about/code-of-conduct/. Linguistic diversity will be particularly useful as our Fellows translate works in many languages from our growing consortium of e-lit databases. 

Applications should include a cv and one-page description of the candidate’s qualifications and approach to e-Lit scholarship. These can be sent to joseph.tabbi@uib.no.

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Unconference 17-18 January 2023

As part of the annual New Media Writing Prize, for the first time, we are hosting a fully online 2-day “unconference” symposium, 17-18 Jan 2023, hosted by BU in partnership with with the Prize and the British Library. The Unconference will culminate in the awards evening for the New Media Writing Prize on 18 January 2023.

NMWP Unconference Theme: Social Good

How can we change our world with our digital art and literature?

Our unconference call for proposals sought creative approaches to conference activities: events, works, and activities that aim to serve a social purpose (such as projects aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals): “Digital Literature for Social Good”. Activist projects, works for education and sustainability, events to brainstorm new digital lit approaches to improving society and culture—it’s all fair game. How can we change our world with our art and literature?

Over the past couple of months, we’ve put together a fantastic two days of discussions, workshops, artists’ talks, and brainstorming sessions. (See the schedule here.)

Join us!

Registration is open to those who would like to attend and participate in these creative sessions.

Please also join us for the ultimate event in our NMWP Unconference, the New Media Writing Prize Awards Evening, which is free and open to the public. Our keynote is Deena Larsen, creator of Marble Springs, Modern Moral Fairy Tale, and other frequently studied and taught works of electronic literature. The 2021 NMWP winner, Joannes Truyens for Neurocracy, will give a featured talk, and awards will be given for the Chris Meade Memorial Main Prize, the Journalism Prize, Student Prize, and the Opening Up Prize (which is still open for voting here!).

We hope to see you there!

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CFP: ELO 2023 Coimbra (Extended Jan 31; July 12-15, 2023)

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE ORGANIZATION 2023 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND MEDIA ARTS SHOW

OVERCOMING DIVIDES: ELECTRONIC LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

JULY 12-15, 2023 – COIMBRA, PORTUGAL

Deadline January 31

(CFP: updated January 20, 2023)

Join us this summer for four days of digital art and scholarship at the ELO 2023 Conference and Media Arts Show in beautiful Coimbra, Portugal, the 12th to the 15th of July.

The 2023 conference, “Overcoming Divides: Electronic Literature and Social Change,” advocates the dismantlement of economic, political, linguistic, and cultural barriers, focusing on the relation between art and society, as well as on the subversive potential of electronic literature.

Art and literature compulsively respond to undergoing socio-political transformations. Whether overtly committed to social causes or inevitably engulfed by waves of change, writers and artists are influenced by dramatic shifts motivated by local or global issues such as climate change, economic crisis, military conflicts, and repressive or coercive government policies. The field of electronic literature, whose continuous reconfiguration is deeply intertwined with technological advancements, is no exception to this pattern. Equipped with the pervasiveness of network technology, as well as with software that can analyze and portray reality with the utmost detail, electronic literature is harnessed with adequate tools to voice environmental and social concerns and to expose oppressive and corrupt regimes. Highly experimental and focused on an introspective journey that aims to explore the creative amplitude of emerging technologies, electronic literature’s self-reflexive nature is also frequently mobilized to defy normative perspectives over literature and art, as well as to challenge deep-rooted cultural misconceptions.

During this conference, we aim to explore how electronic literature uses its critical media approach, as well as its close affinity with computation, to assume a socially engaged stance. In a time when walls are being raised once again, this conference examines electronic literature’s role in the dismantlement of new and old barriers between people.

ELO23 will be held in a national monument (Convento São Francisco), overlooking the University of Coimbra as well as Coimbra’s Uptown and Downtown areas, both designated World Heritage by UNESCO in 2013. Challenging the social asymmetry represented by the uptown/downtown divide, ELO23 will be extended from the university to the entire city center. Performances will be opened to the public, and exhibitions will take place at different locations in the city, thus integrating ELO Conference into Coimbra’s rich cultural life. Remote (online) participation will be limited to the scholarly dimension of the conference.

We welcome scholarly and artistic proposals that explore a connection between electronic literature and the following themes, among others:

  • the role of literature in social change;
  • collaborative platforms and activist software;
  • digital humanities and memory preservation (archive);
  • environmental damage caused by digital technologies;
  • the impact of climate change;
  • language barriers, translation and linguistic diversity;
  • disabilities and accessibility;
  • mental health, trauma and cognitive diversity;
  • social and economic inequality;
  • digital literacy and societal transformation;
  • gender divide and identity diversity;
  • migrations and border enforcement;
  • hybridity, recombination and multilinearity as aesthetics of subversion;
  • documentary forms and nonfiction narrative.

Organizers
Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra (FLUC)

Partners and Sponsors
Center for Portuguese Literature (CLP)
Instituto de Comunicação da NOVA (ICNOVA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Programa de Doutoramento em Materialidades da Literatura, Universidade de Coimbra
Universidade Fernando Pessoa (UFP)
Câmara Municipal de Coimbra
Exploratório – Centro Ciência Viva de Coimbra
Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra
Berkeley Center for New Media

How to submit your proposals

How to submit your proposals

All proposals will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process. Please read the instructions carefully. You may submit only one proposal for each mode of participation (paper/panel; workshop; artwork; performance).

ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS: PANELS AND PAPERS

We welcome submissions for stand-alone papers as well as organized panels. Individual submissions for stand-alone papers should include an abstract (250-350 words), as well as a short list of references (4-6 main works). Individual papers will be presented as part of conference organized panels. Each presentation will be 15 minutes long, followed by a 20-minute Q&A. Please specify in your submission if this presentation will be in person or online.

Three or four-person panels should include a brief overview of the panel’s rationale (100-150 words), as well as individual abstracts of each presentation: abstracts (250-350 words), including a short list of references (4-6 main works). Panels will have a total presentation time of one hour, and should allow for a 20 minute Q&A section. Please specify in your submission whether this panel will be in person or fully online. Hybrid panels will not be supported.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 31, 2023, 11:59pm EST. While proposals should be in English, panels can be presented in other languages. Note that no translation services will be offered. In case of acceptance, abstracts will be included in the program and proceedings.

Participants will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

WORKSHOPS 

We welcome submissions for hands-on and participatory workshops. Proposals should include a 250-350 word abstract (as well as a short list of references if applicable; 4-6 main works). Please specify in your proposal the structure of the workshop, any tangible outcomes (if any), pedagogical goals, expectations from participants, requirements for participants (previous knowledge, technical expertise, devices needed, etc.). Make sure you describe any technical requirements for your workshop’s implementation at the conference.

All workshops will have an allocated time of 2 hours. Please specify in your submission if this workshop will be in person or online.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 31, 2023, by 11:59pm EST. While proposals should be in English, workshops can be presented in other languages. Note that no translation services will be offered. In case of acceptance, abstracts will be included in the program and proceedings. 

Participants will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

ARTWORK: EXHIBITION OF DIGITAL WORK
We welcome submissions for two different public exhibitions addressing (1) environmental issues and (2) social issues, i.e., repression, inequality, and segregation.

Please send proposals including an artist statement (250-350 words) detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference and chosen exhibition theme (Exhibition 1 or Exhibition 2). In addition, provide documentation of the work (URLs), author name(s), biographical note(s), and specific technical requirements for display at the exhibition venue.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 31, 2023, 11:59pm EST. Proposals should be in English, but displayed work can be in other languages. In case of acceptance, artist statements will be included in the program and proceedings.

Artists will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

PERFORMANCES

ELO23 will host two nights of performances open to conference participants and the general public. We welcome performance proposals addressing the conference’s main theme of electronic literature and social change.

Please submit proposals including an artist statement (250-350 words) detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference theme. In addition, provide the author name(s), biographical note(s), and a description (250 words max.) of the nature of the performance, as well as any technical requirements.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 31, 2023, 11:59pm EST. Proposals should be in English, but performances can be in other languages. In case of acceptance, artist statements will be included in the program and proceedings.

Performers will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

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As with any ELO event, ELO23 will follow the organization’s code of conduct. We are committed to providing an inclusive, equitable, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, class, religion, or linguistic and cultural background. For more information, please refer to https://eliterature.org/about/code–of–conduct/

Chairs

Daniela Côrtes Maduro (Universidade de Coimbra)
Manuel Portela (Universidade de Coimbra)
Alex Saum-Pascual (University of California, Berkeley)
Rui Torres (Universidade Fernando Pessoa)

Feel free to contact us: eloconference2023@gmail.com.