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Electronic Literature Organization
Formation1999; 25 years ago (1999)
FounderScott Rettberg, Robert Coover, Jeff Ballowe
President
Caitlin Fisher
Vice President
Anastasia Salter
Secretary
Mark Sample
Managing Director of CELL
Davin Heckman
Websitehttps://eliterature.org/

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature".[1] It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of and criticism of electronic literature, hosts online events and has published a series of collections of electronic literature.

History

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Founding and early years (1999-2002)

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The ELO was founded in 1999 in Chicago by Scott Rettberg, Robert Coover, and Jeff Ballowe. Rettberg took the role as CEO, and Ballowe was president. In a book chapter about this early phase, Rettberg describes the first three years as a "turbulent and exciting period".[2]

An article in the Los Angeles Times describes the first reading organised by the ELO in July 2000, "a recent evening at the home of Microsoft executive Richard Bangs", with "trays of light finger food and delicately chilled Chardonnay" with "guests from high-tech east side Seattle mingled with representatives of the old-guard arts establishment and half a dozen writers of new fiction who had come to read from their work".[3]

The new organization was able to ride the excitement of the tech industry during the dot-com bubble, but also suffered from the subsequent crash.[2]

Transition to academic hosts (2002-2008)

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The ELO had early successes in obtaining funding from individuals in the technology industry and the Ford Foundation (which funded the Electronic Literature Symposium at UCLA in 2002) and the Rockefeller Foundation (which funded work on the Electronic Literature Directory).[2] However, the dot com crash made funding dry up, and despite some local funding in Chicago, the organization had to transition from having full-time staff and an office to being hosted by universities. In 2001 the ELO moved to UCLA, supported by the English department.[2] Marjorie Luesebrink became president, N. Katherine Hayles was faculty advisor, and Jessica Pressman was the managing director.[2] The organization has since been hosted by universities, including the University of Maryland, College Park in 2006 where it was supported by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (under the direction of Matthew Kirschenbaum), and MIT under the leadership of Nick Montfort. The ELO is currently hosted at York University, Toronto, Canada, under the leadership of Caitlin Fisher,[4] marking the first time this international organization has moved its headquarters outside of the United States.

2008-present

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Since the 2007 conference, the ELO has grown annually and by 2015 was gathering hundreds of people at each of its conferences.

Leadership

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Past presidents of the ELO include Jeff Ballowe, Scott Rettberg (as Executive Director), Marjorie Luesebrink, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Joseph Tabbi, Nick Montfort, Dene Grigar,[5] and Leonardo Flores.[6][7] Caitlin Fisher became president in July 2022.[8][9]

Conferences

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The ELO holds annual conferences that include both scholarly presentations and exhibitions and performances of electronic literature. The ELO website contains an archive of past conference websites.[10]

ELO Conferences
Year Theme Location
2002 State of the Arts Symposium Los Angeles, California
2007 The Future of Electronic Literature College Park, Maryland
2008 Visionary Landscapes Vancouver, Washington
2010 ELO_AI: Archive & Innovate Providence, Rhode Island
2012 Electrifying Literature: Affordances and Constraints Morgantown, West Virginia
2013 Chercher le texte Paris, France
2014 Hold the Light Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2015 The End(s) of Electronic Literature Bergen, Norway
2016 Next Horizons Victoria, BC
2017 Electronic Literature: Affiliations, Comm, Translations Porto, Portugal
2018 Attention á la marche / Mind the gap![11] Montreal, Canada
2019 Peripheries[12] Cork, Ireland
2020 (un)continuity[13] Orlando, Florida (virtual)
2021 Platform (Post?) Pandemic[14] Bergen, Norway; Aarhus, Denmark & virtual
2022 Education and Electronic Literature[15] Como, Italy
2023 Overcoming Divides: Electronic Literature and Social Change[16] Coimbra, Portugal

Publications

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  • The Electronic Literature Directory[17] is a database of works of electronic literature.
  • Two reports on the preservation of electronic literature were published in 2004 and 2005 by the ELO as part of the Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination (PAD) project.[18][19][20]
  • A book series called Electronic Literature with Bloomsbury.[21]
  • Pathfinders, a documentation of the experience of early digital literature.[22]

Electronic Literature Collections

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The ELO has curated and edited four volumes of electronic literature.[23][24][25]

Volume 1 (October 2006). Mark Marino noted in the Digital Humanities Quarterly, "Amidst the collection, there are some works that transcend the collection itself and stand out as pillars of electronic writing. Such pieces have already garnered much critical attention. Most notable among these would be Judd Morrissey’s The Jew’s Daughter, Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue, Stuart Moulthrop’s Reagan Library, Talan Memmott’s Lexia to Perplexia, and Kate Pulinger’s Inanimate Alice.[26]

Volume 2 (February 2011) Tim Wright explains that "the process of gathering, archiving and tagging the works to make them more easily available to a wider audience, also freezes (necessarily) what may have been otherwise ephemeral or in situ."[27]

Volume 3 (February 2016) Urszula Anna Pawlicka noted that ELC3 represents a "post" code range of literature.[28] This work also includes Qianxun Chen's Shan Shui, Porpentine's With Those We Love Alive, Borsuk's Between Page and Screen, Illya Szilak's Queerskins, Emily Short and Liza Daly's First Draft of the Revolution, Jeremy Height's 34 North 118 West, J.R. Carpenter's Along the Briny Beach, Mark Marino and Rob Wittig's Being@Spencer Pratt, Caitlin Fisher's Everyone at This Party is Dead, Anna Anthropy's Hunt for the Gay Planet, N. Katherine Hayle's Speculation.[29]

Volume 4 (June 2022). ELC4 presents the largest and most diverse group yet of elit authors writing in Afrikaans, Ancient Chinese, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, isiXhosa, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mezangelle, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Setswana, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, South African Sign Language, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Yoruba[30]

Awards

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The 2001 Electronic Literature Awards

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In 2001 the ELO announced the Electronic Literature Awards, with a $10,000 prize (funded by ZDNet) for the best work of fiction and the best work of poetry.[31][32] 163 works were submitted, and each was reviewed by at least three people on the board, after which the highest scoring works were passed on to judges Larry McCaffery and Heather McHugh.[2] Rettberg notes that the diversity of works submitted and shortlisted was "an eye-opener (..) in terms of what I might consider 'fiction' and 'poetry' to be in the e-lit context'.[2]

In 2001, These Waves of Girls by Caitlin Fisher won the fiction prize and windsound by John Cayley won the poetry prize. The excitement of the era can be felt in an interview by the cable television channel TechTV with Fisher after the awards gala in New York.[33]

ELO Awards (2014-)

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After a pause due to a lack of funding, the ELO Awards were rekindled in 2014, and since then an annual award has been given to the best literary work and the best work of scholarship on electronic literature.[34] Each award comes with a $1000 stipend.

Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

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This award honors the year’s best work of electronic literature, of any form or genre.

Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature
Year Awarded to
2014 Jason Edward Lewis, Vital to the General Public Welfare
2015 Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro, Pry
2016 Scott Rettberg and Roderick Coover, Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project
2017 Alan Bigelow, How To Rob a Bank
2018 Will Luers, Hazel Smith, and Roger Dean, Novelling
2019 Ip Yuk-Yiu, False Words 流/言
2020 Karen Ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato, The Library of Nonhuman Books
2021 Leise Hook, The Vine and the Fish
2022 David Jhave Johnston, ReRites[35]

Honorable Mention: "Al Barrah" by Reham Hosny.

2023 Everest Pipkin, Anonymous Animal. Runner-up: "The (m)Otherhood of Meep (the bat translator)" by Alinta Krauth

Honorable Mention: "The Decameron 2.0" by The Decameron Collective

2024 Halim Madi, Borderline. Runner-up: "Seeing" by Margot Machado

Honorable Mentions: "Exocolony" by Lee Tusman; "Unboxing: Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House" by the Marino family; "VideoDreams" by Fernando Montes Vera

N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

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This award honors the best work of criticism of electronic literature of any length.

N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature
Year Awarded to
2014 Johannes Heldén [sv] and Håkan Jonson [sv], Evolution
2015 Sandy Baldwin, The Internet Unconscious: On the Subject of Electronic Literature
2016 Jeremy Douglass, Jessica Pressman, and Mark Marino, Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope
2017 David Jhave Johnston, Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry’s Ontological Implications
2018 Joseph Tabbi, Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature
2019 Scott Rettberg, Electronic Literature
2020 Mark Marino, Critical Code Studies
2021 Jessica Pressman, Bookishness
2022 Lai-Tze Fan (editor) “Critical Making, Critical Design,” Issue 01 of The Digital Review[35]
2023 Lyle Skains, Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction. Runner up: Opera aperta: Italian Electronic Literature from the 1960s to the Present" by Emanuela Patti. Honorable mention: “Girl Online” by Joanna Walsh
2024 Hannes Bajohr, "Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: On Machine Learning and the Reading Expectations Towards Literary and Non-Literary Writing." Runner up: "Machine Mimesis: Electronic Literature at the Intersection of Human and Computer Imitation," by Malthe Stavning Erslev.

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.”

Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

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This 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.

Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award
Year Awarded to
2016 Marjorie C. Luesebrink
2017 John Cayley
2018 N. Katherine Hayles
2019 Mez Breeze
2020 Judy Malloy
2021 Kate Pullinger
2022 Alan Sondheim
2023 Stephanie Strickland
2024 Dene Grigar

Maverick Award

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This 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."

Maverick Award
Year Awarded to
2021 Talan Memmott
2023 Deena Larsen
2024 Allison Parrish

References

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  1. ^ "Electronic Literature Organization". ELO. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-21.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Rettberg, Scott (2015). "Developing an Identity for the Field of Electronic Literature: Reflections on the Electronic Literature Organization Archives". Electronic literature communities. Scott Rettberg, Patricia Tomaszek, Sandy Baldwin. Morgantown, WV. pp. 81–112. ISBN 978-1-940425-99-3. OCLC 944133627.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ Murphy, Kim (2000-07-24). "Electronic Literature: Thinking Outside the Book". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2022-10-15.
  4. ^ "Professor Caitlin Fisher named president of Electronic Literature Organization". 22 July 2022.
  5. ^ Flood, Alison (2014-03-12). "Where did the story of ebooks begin?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  6. ^ Burnette, Ellen Gwin. "Dr. Leonardo Flores named chair of Appalachian's Department of English". today.appstate.edu. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  7. ^ "ELO History – Electronic Literature Organization". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  8. ^ "Professor Caitlin Fisher named president of Electronic Literature Organization – YFile". 22 July 2022. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  9. ^ Marino, Mark (2022-07-15). "ELO Presidency Transition from Flores to Fisher". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  10. ^ "Electronic Literature Organization Conference Archive". conference.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  11. ^ Marino, Mark (2018). "ELO 2018: Attention à la marche / Mind the Gap – Electronic Literature Organization". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  12. ^ O'Sullivan, James (2019-07-10). "ELO2019: Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival, Programme and Book of Abstracts". University College Cork. pp. 1–166.
  13. ^ "ELO2020 Conference and Media Arts Festival – Electronic Literature Organization 2020 conference". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  14. ^ "ELO 2021". conferences.au.dk. 2021. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  15. ^ "ELO 2022 – Electronic Literature Conference Italy". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  16. ^ "ELO 2022 – Electronic Literature Conference Italy". Retrieved 2022-01-14.
  17. ^ "Home | Electronic Literature Directory". directory.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  18. ^ "PAD – Electronic Literature Organization". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  19. ^ Montfort, Nick; Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (2004-06-14). "Acid-Free Bits: Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Literature". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  20. ^ Liu, Alan; Durand, David; Montfort, Nick; Proffitt, Merrilee; Quin, Liam R.E.; Réty, Jean-Hugues; Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (2005-08-05). "Born-Again Bits: A Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  21. ^ Bloomsbury. "Electronic Literature: Bloomsbury Publishing (US)". www.bloomsbury.com. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  22. ^ Grigar, Dene; Moulthrop, Stuart (2015). Pathfinders. Nouspace Publications. ISBN 978-0-692-14708-5. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  23. ^ "Electronic Literature Collection". collection.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
  24. ^ Hall, María Cristina; Castelán, Silvia; Nepote, Mónica; Gb, Camila (2022). "Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4". collection.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  25. ^ "Electronic Literature Collection". collection.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  26. ^ Marino, Mark (2008). "Review: The Electronic Literature Collection Volume I: A New Media Primer". DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly. 2 (1).
  27. ^ "The Electronic Literature Collection V2". Cordite Poetry Review. 2011-11-30. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
  28. ^ Pawlicka, Urszula Anna (2016). "Visualizing Electronic Literature Collections". CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. 18 (1). Purdue University Press. doi:10.7771/1481-4374.2902.
  29. ^ "Electronic Literature Collection - Volume 3". collection.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-04-30.
  30. ^ Berens, Kathi; Murray, John; Skains, Lyle; Torres, Rui; Zamora, Mia (2022-01-01). "Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4". English Faculty Publications and Presentations.
  31. ^ "The 2001 Electronic Literature Awards". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  32. ^ Richer, Adam (2000). "Electronic Literature Awards : $10.000 Prizes For Fiction & Poetry". University of Bergen Library Collection: Electronic Literature - posters and other historical documents.
  33. ^ Swish, Laura (2001). Grigar, Dene (ed.). TechTV Interview with Caitlin Fisher. TechTV / Vimeo.
  34. ^ "Past ELO Award Winners – Electronic Literature Organization". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  35. ^ a b Snyder, R. (2022-10-04). "Announcing the 2022 ELO Prizes – Electronic Literature Organization". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
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