The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". 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

Founding and early years (1999-2002)

The ELO was founded in 1999 in Chicago by

Scott Rettberg Scott Rettberg is an American digital artist and scholar of electronic literature based in Bergen, Norway. He is the co-founder and served as the first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization. He leads the Center for Digital ...

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. Background ...

, 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". An article in the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

in 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". The new organization was able to ride the excitement of the tech industry during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, but also suffered from the subsequent crash.

Transition to academic hosts (2002-2008)

The ELO had early successes in obtaining funding from individuals in the technology industry and the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

(which funded the Electronic Literature Symposium at

UCLA 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 ...

in 2002) and the Rockefeller Foundation (which funded work on the Electronic Literature Directory). However, the

dot com crash The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

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. Marjorie Luesebrink became president, N. Katherine Hayles was faculty advisor, and

Jessica Pressman Jessica Pressman is a scholar who studies electronic literature including digital poetry, media studies, and experimental literature. She creates works that examine how technologies affect reading practices that are displayed through several medi ...

was the managing director. The organization has since been hosted by universities, including the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

in 2006 where it was supported by the

Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is an international research center that works with humanities in the 21st century. A collaboration among the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities, Libraries, and O ...

(under the direction of Matthew Kirschenbaum), and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

under the leadership of

Nick Montfort Nick Montfort is a poet and professor of digital media at MIT, where he directs a lab called The Trope Tank. He also holds a part-time position at the University of Bergen where he leads a node on computational narrative systems at the Center for ...

2008-present

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

Leadership

Past presidents of the ELO include Jeff Ballowe,

(as Executive Director), Marjorie Luesebrink, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Joseph Tabbi,

Dene Grigar Dene Grigar is a digital artist and scholar based in Vancouver, Washington. She was the President of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2013 to 2019. In 2016, Grigar received the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Lifetime ...

, and Leonardo Flores. Caitlin Fisher became president in July 2022.

Conferences

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.

Publications

* Four volumes of the Electronic Literature Collection have been published, in 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2022. * The Electronic Literature Directory 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. * A book series called Electronic Literature with Bloomsbury. * ''Pathfinders'', a documentation of the experience of early digital literature.

Awards

The 2001 Electronic Literature Awards

In 2001 the ELO announced the Electronic Literature Awards, with a $10,000 prize (funded by

ZDNet ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication. His ...

) for the best work of fiction and the best work of poetry. 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 Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...

and

Heather McHugh Heather McHugh (born August 20, 1948) is an American poet notable for the independent ranges of her aesthetic as a poet, and for her working devotion to teaching and translating literature. Life Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, educator and ...

. 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'. In 2001, ''

These Waves of Girls These Waves of Girls is a hypermedia novella by Caitlin Fisher that won the Electronic Literature Organization's Award for Fiction in 2001. The work is frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the field of elec ...

'' by Caitlin Fisher won the fiction prize and ''windsound'' by

John Cayley John Howland Cayley (born 1956) is a Canadian pioneer of writing in digital media as well as a theorist of the practice, a poet, and a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University (from 2007). Education After moving to the United Kingdom in ...

won the poetry prize. The excitement of the era can be felt in an interview by the cable television channel

TechTV TechTV is a defunct 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming ...

with Fisher after the awards gala in New York.

ELO Awards (2014-)

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. Each award comes with a $1000 stipend.

Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

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

N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

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

Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

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.

References

External links

*
Electronic Literature Directory
* Electronic literature Literary societies {{Authority control