Amaranth Borsuk (born 1981) is an American poet and educator known for her experiments with textual materiality and
digital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in cert ...
. She is currently an associate professor at the
University of Washington Bothell
The University of Washington Bothell (UW Bothell) is a branch campus of University of Washington in Bothell, Washington. It was founded in 1989 and is located just northwest of the junction of Interstate 405 and State Route 522, and it shares ...
's School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, where she teaches undergraduate courses on poetry,
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...
, and experimental writing alongside co-chairing the school's
M.F.A. program in
Creative Writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
since 2018.
Life
Borsuk was born in
Meriden, Connecticut
Meriden is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, located halfway between the regional cities of New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 2020, the population of the city was 60,850.[University of California Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...]
, and an M.A. in English Literature and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
. Her work includes poetry
HandiworkTonal SawPomegranate Eater
, artist books, and collaborative digital projects
AbraAs We KnowWhispering GalleriesBetween Page and Screen
, and she has a special interest in investigating textual materiality. Borsuk was
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
in the Humanities at MIT. She has been married to software develope
Brad Bouse
since 2013, and the couple have one daughter.
''Whispering Galleries''
Whispering Galleries
' by Borsuk and Brad Bouse is a 2014 site-specific, interactive, multimedia poetry project that uses a reader’s gestures to transform a local diary into erasure poetry on the screen. As readers gesture over the computer, transcriptions from a diary dissolve as so much digital dust, leaving behind a poem. Through a webcam, the participant’s shadow emerges behind the words, creating a symbolic link between the viewer and the work.
Whispering Galleries was commissioned by Site Projects, a nonprofit that supports artistic works. The project was also supported by The New Haven Free Public Library and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Originally displayed at th
New Haven Free Public Library
on April 26, 2014, it later went on to be exhibited a
in New Haven (2014)
The International Symposium on Electronic Art
at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (2015), an
“You , I: Interfaces & Reader Experience
at the Paul Watkins Gallery, Winona State University (2016). It is available online. For the full experience, a Chrome browser,
Leap controller
and a webcam are required.
Prizes
* Subito Prize, 2014
* Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, 2011
* Slope Editions Prize, 2011
Publications
* ''Between Page and Screen'' (Siglio, 2012), with Brad Bouse
See also
*List of electronic literature authors, critics, and works
This is a list of electronic literature authors and works (that originate from digital environments), and its critics. Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works of literature that ''originate'' within digital environments. I ...
*Digital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in cert ...
* E-book#History
*Electronic literature
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...
*Hypertext fiction
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text t ...
*Interactive fiction
''
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
*Literatronica
The term literatronica, also literatronic (Marino, 2006), was coined by Colombian mathematician and author Juan B Gutierrez (2002) to refer to electronic literature. According to Gutierrez (2006):
{{cquote, A word that describes digital narrati ...
References
External links
''Whispering Galleries'' entry on ELD.
''Whispering Galleries'' entry on ELMCIP
''Whispering Galleries'' entry on Scalar.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Borsuk, Amaranth
Living people
American poets
University of Washington faculty
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
University of Southern California alumni
University of Washington Bothell faculty
1981 births
Electronic literature writers