January 15, 2006
Editors Seek Electronic Literature
The Electronic Literature Collection 1 seeks submissions of readable digital media – literary works that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the computer. Hypertext, interactive fiction, e-mail novels, cybertext poems, games with literary dimensions, visual and animated literary pieces, performance texts, and on and on.
The deadline looms just two weeks from this posting – January 31! We welcome submissions of work from years past, though. For this first Collection, N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland are the editorial collective. The Collection will be available on CD and online, and Creative Commons licensed so that students, teachers, and individuals can share and enjoy. See the call for works for details.
January 15th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
At first I thought “Hey, I have a literary work that ‘takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the computer'”, but it looks like more substantial games with literary dimensions, like say, interactive drama, are out of the running (50MB limits, must be x-platform).
January 15th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Yes, we do have to fit the first Collection onto a single CD and into a CD-sized download, which we want to be available to readers and students of diverse platform.
Future Collections (the plan is for this to be an annual publication) may be more capacious and may have different platform requirements – or work that currently runs only on Windows might work on other platforms in the future, who knows?
While we think the Collection will still be very cool, it’s true that it won’t collect everything. Fortunately, the Collection is only one project of the Electronic Literature Organization. Since we’re interested in promoting e-lit of all sorts, including that which won’t fit into this project, we also announce new work on our website; feature work in the ELO Showcase, linking to the sites from which such work can be downloaded; and support readings and events at which people present about their work. In the past we’ve invited people to talk about their work in chats online, too.
Just a few of the ways in which the ELO is working for you…