This is a list of

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 ...

authors and works (that originate from digital environments), and its critics.

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 ...

is a

literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided in ...

consisting of works of

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

that ''originate'' within digital environments. It can also be defined as those works using a digital element as an integral part of the work (essential to convey the meaning of the piece). This list is specific and exclusive to

and works originally published electronically, and does not include works published in book format only, web blogs, newspapers, directories, etc. However, this list may include works that have been published both electronically and in print.

Authors

* Amy Briggs * Annie Abrahams *

Mabel Addis Mabel Addis Mergardt (21 May 1912 – 13 August 2004) was an American writer, teacher and the first female video game designer. She designed '' The Sumerian Game'', programmed by William McKay, for the IBM 7090 in 1964. It inspired similarly-sty ...

* Anna Anthropy * Robert Arellano * Kate Armstrong * Jean-Pierre Balpe * Alan Bigelow *

Amaranth Borsuk Amaranth Borsuk (born 1981) is an American poet and educator known for her experiments with textual materiality and digital poetry. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Washington Bothell's School of Interdisciplinary Arts ...

* Serge Bouchardon *

Mez Breeze Mez Breeze is an Australian-based artist and practitioner of net.art, working primarily with code poetry, electronic literature, mezangelle, and digital games. Born Mary-Anne Breeze, she uses a number of avatar nicknames, including Mez and Netw ...

* Nancy Buchanan * J.R. Carpenter *

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 ...

* Lynda Clark *

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 ...

Caterina Davinio Caterina Davinio (born Maria Caterina Invidia; 25 November 1957, Foggia) is an Italian poet, novelist and new media artist. She is the author of works of digital art, net.art, video art and was the creator of Italian Net-poetry in 1998. Biogr ...

* Claire Dinsmore *

J. Yellowlees Douglas Jane Yellowlees Douglas (born J. Yellowlees Douglas; June 25, 1962) is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction ''I Hav ...

Jacek Dukaj Jacek Józef Dukaj (born 30 July 1974) is a Polish science fiction and fantasy writer. He has received numerous literary prizes including the European Union Prize for Literature and Janusz A. Zajdel Award. Career He was born on 30 July 1974 i ...

* Tina Escaja * Caitlin Fisher *

Mary Flanagan Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer. She pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play and has written five books. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor ...

Belén Gache Belén Gache (Buenos Aires, 1960) is a Spanish-Argentinian novelist and experimental writer. Of Spanish and Gibraltarian descent, she was born in Buenos Aires. She lives in Madrid. She graduated from the University of Buenos Aires where she was pro ...

Loss Pequeño Glazier Poet Loss Pequeño Glazier is the creator of books of print poetry, digital poems, theoretical texts, and performance works. Glazier stands among literary figures at the "forefront of the digital poetics movement. A "distinguished writer of elect ...

Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman is an American game developer known for her combination of narrative, theatricality and gaming in VR environments, and for introducing gestural interactions in touchscreen narratives. She has won multiple awards for her work, both ...

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 ...

* Juan B. Gutierrez *

Dan Hett Dan Hett is a digital artist, writer and games designer from Manchester, UK. He is also a member of the Algorave live coding electronic music and visuals movement, performing under the name Rituals. Career Hett's writing is influenced by the ...

Richard Holeton Richard Holeton (born December 28, 1952) is an American writer and higher-education administrator. Holeton's creative works are foundational in the hypertext and electronic literature genres. As a writer, his most notable work is the hypertext no ...

Elliott Holt Elliott Holt is an American fiction writer and former ad copywriter. In 2013, she published '' You Are One of Them'', a novel based on the true story of Samantha Smith. Biography Holt attended Kenyon College as an undergraduate, where she "cre ...

* Jeremy Hight *

Andrew Hussie Andrew Hussie (born August 25, 1979) is an American author and artist. He is best known as the creator of ''Homestuck'', a multimedia webcomic presented in the style of a text-based graphical adventure game, as well as other works in a similar ...

Shelley Jackson Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction ''Patchwork Girl'' (1995) and her first novel, ''Half Life'' (2006). Biography In her own words: "Shelley ...

David Jhave Johnston David Jhave Johnston is a Canadian poet, videographer, and motion graphics artist working chiefly in digital and computational media. This artist's work is often attributed, simply, to the name Jhave. Education and career Jhave completed his ...

* Michael Joyce * Eduardo Kac *

Yael Kanarek Yael Kanarek (born 1967) is an Israeli American artist based in New York City that is known for pioneering use of the Internet and of multilingualism in work of art. Background Born in New York and raised in Israel, Kanarek returned to New York ...

* Robert Kendall * Norman M. Klein *

Allison Knowles Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge diffe ...

Deena Larsen Deena Larsen (born 1964) is a new media and hypertext fiction author involved in the creative electronic writing community since the 1980s. Her work has been published in online journals such as the ''Iowa Review Web'', ''Cauldron and Net'', ''fr ...

* Olia Lialina * Marjorie Luesebrink pseudonym M.D. Coverley * Kathy Mac *

Jackson Mac Low Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004) was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which ...

* Talan Memmott *

Judy Malloy Judy Malloy (born Judith Ann Powers January 9, 1942) is a poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with ''Uncle Roger'' in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new media litera ...

* Cathy Marshall *

Yucef Merhi Yucef Merhi (born February 8, 1977) is a Venezuelan artist, poet and computer programmer based in New York.Carlo Zanni''INTERVIEW WITH YUCEF MERHI'', Centre international d'art contemporain de Montréal's online magazine, No.18, 2004. Early lif ...

* María Mencía * Stuart Moulthrop *

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 ...

Jason Nelson Jason Nelson is a digital and hypermedia poet and artist. He is Associate Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, where he was also a Fulbright Fellow from 2016-17. Until 2020 he was a lecturer on Cyberstudies, digital writ ...

Philip M. Parker Philip M. Parker (born June 20, 1960) is an American economist and academic, currently the INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He has patented a method to automatically produce a set of similar book ...

* Allison Parrish *

Milorad Pavić Milorad Pavić ( sr-Cyrl, Милорад Павић, ; 15 October 1929 – 30 November 2009) was a Serbian novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary historian. Born in Belgrade in 1929, he published a number of poems, short stories ...

* Judith Pintar * Kate Pullinger *

Zoë Quinn Zoë Tiberius Quinn (born 1987) is an American video game developer, programmer, and writer. Quinn developed the interactive fiction game '' Depression Quest'', which was released in 2013. In 2014, a defamatory blog post by their ex-boyfrien ...

Melinda Rackham Melinda Rackham is an Australian artist, writer and curator. Education and early art Rackham studied sculpture and performance at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, graduating in 1989 with the Sculpture and Alumni prizes. It was here she was ...

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 ...

Emily Short Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer. She is perhaps best known for her debut game ''Galatea'' and her use of psychologically complex non-player characters (NPCs). Short has been called "a visionary in the world of text-based ga ...

* Sarah Smith * Alan Sondheim *

Brian Kim Stefans Brian Kim Stefans (born 1969) is an American poet. Biography He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey and, earned a bachelor's degree from Bard College and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from Brown University after studies at the Graduate ...

Stephanie Strickland Stephanie Strickland (born February 22, 1942) is a poet living in New York City. She has published ten volumes of print poetry and co-authored twelve digital poems. Her files and papers are being collected by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book And ...

* Gianni Toti * Camille Utterback * Helen Varley Jamieson * Vincent Volckaert *

Noah Wardrip-Fruin Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a professor in the Computational Media department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is an advisor for the Expressive Intelligence Studio. He is an alumnus of the Literary Arts MFA program and Special Graduate S ...

Rae White Rae White is a Brisbane-based poet and writer. White is non-binary and the founding editor of the online periodical ''#EnbyLife: Journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives''. White's 2017 poetry collection ''Milk Teeth'' won the Thomas ...

* Adrianne Wortzel * Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries * Jody Zellen

Critics

Espen J. Aarseth Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. Aarseth completed his doctorate at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics ...

Jay David Bolter Jay David Bolter (born August 17, 1951) is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of tec ...

Johanna Drucker Johanna Drucker (born May 30, 1952) is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital art ae ...

Astrid Ensslin Astrid Christina Ensslin is a German digital humanities scholar and games researcher, and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She was previously Professor of Media and Digital Communications at the University of Alberta. Enss ...

N. Katherine Hayles Nancy Katherine Hayles (born December 16, 1943) is an American postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature. She is the James B. Duke Di ...

Lisbeth Klastrup Lisbeth Klastrup (born in 1970) is a Danish scholar of new media. Although her early research was on hypertext fiction, she is now best known for her research on virtual worlds, particularly MMOGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Klastru ...

* George Landow *

Lev Manovich Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computin ...

* Stuart Moulthrop *

Janet Murray Janet Horowitz Murray (born 1946) is an American professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999, she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for ...

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 ...

Jill Walker Rettberg Jill Walker Rettberg (born Jill Walker in 1971) is Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She is "a leading researcher in self-representation in social media" and a European Research Council grantee (2018-2023) with the proj ...

* Marie-Laure Ryan * Roberto Simanowski

Works

Journals and collected works

*The Digital Review ia an annual publication of literary criticism of electronic literature/born digital works. https://thedigitalreview.com/index.html * The Electronic Literature Organization has collected notable works of electronic literature in four collections at https://collection.eliterature.org/ *The Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (ELMCIP) is a research resource for electronic literature, with 3,851 entries as of September 2, 2022. * The New River Anthology: A Journal of Digital Art and Literature at https://thenewriver.us/ has been publishing electronic literature continually since 1996. *trAce Online Writing Centre's journal, frAme, issued 34 works of electronic literature in 6 issues of its journal, frAme. which is now restored at the Washington State University's NeXt Museum. *Turbulence was a New Media Journal from 1996 to 2006

Publishers

Eastgate Systems/Mark Bernstein

Titles

See :Electronic literature works * ''

Afternoon, a story ''afternoon, a story'', spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction. ...

Michael Joyce (writer) Michael Joyce (born 1945) is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic of electronic literature. Joyce's '' afternoon, a story'', 1987, was among the first literary works of hypertex ...

'' (1987, 1990) * ''

Victory Garden Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I ...

'' (1992) * ''

Patchwork Girl The Patchwork Girl (a.k.a. Scraps) is a character from the fantasy Oz Book series by L. Frank Baum. She first appeared in ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz''. History Scraps is a teenaged (possibly fourteen) living rag doll made of patchwork, butto ...

'' (1995) * ''Califia, Marjorie Luesebrink M.D. Coverley '' *''Egypt: The book of Going Forth by Day Marjorie Luesebrink M.D. Coverley '' *'' The Unknown'' by William Gillespie,

, and Dirk Stratton (1999) *'' Lexia to Perplexia'' by Talan Memmott (2000) *''

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 (2001) * '' The Imaginary 20th Century'' (2016) * ''Poesie Elettroniche'' (2016) * '' Notes Toward Absolute Zero'' (1995) * ''Déprise'' (2010) * ''

Figurski at Findhorn on Acid ''Figurski at Findhorn on Acid'' is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. It is a work of inte ...

'' (2001, 2021) * 'Game, game, game and again game'' (2008), ''Nothing you have done deserves such praise'' (2013), ''I made this. you play this. we are enemies'' (2009), and ''Scrape Scraperteeth'' (2011) are important examples of the intersection of games and poetry.

'' *

ReRites ''ReRites'' (also known as ''RERITES, ReadingRites, Big Data Poetry'') is a literary work of "Human + A.I. poetry" by David Jhave Johnston that used neural network models trained to generate poetry which the author then edited. ReRites won the Ro ...

(2019)

Awards

Woollahra Digital Literary Award

Annual national Award in

Woollahra Woollahra is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located 5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woolla ...

, Australia.given since 2017. The winners are announced at the Woohlahara Library at Double Bay, near Sydney Australia. There is a prize pool of $7,500 Australian dollars for 2022 prizes. The awards are given to literary works that are "digitally born," which they define as published online or electronically. There are now prizes for digital innovation, which support the possibilities in

(works that use a function of the computer itself as an integral part of the meaning). These works of electronic literature won awards: 2021 * Digital Innovation: David Henley, ''The Collapse'' (electronic literature, digital experimental format) * Readers’ Choice Award: Heidi Sfiligoi, ''I Am Water'' (digital poem with visuals) 2020 * Readers’ Choice Award:

, ''Perpetual Nomads'' (electronic literature, digital experimental format)

2019

* Poetry:

, ''Nine Billion Branches'' (electronic literature, digital experimental format)

Early Prototype Hypertext Writers

Hypertext involves works that incorporate extra elements, such as visual or aural components, as an integral part of the work. Proto-electronic literature writers include: *

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Theresa Hak Kyung Cha ( ko, 차학경; March 4, 1951 – November 5, 1982) was an American novelist, producer, director, and artist of South Korean origin, best known for her 1982 novel, ''Dictee''. Considered an avant-garde artist, Cha w ...

References

{{reflist Literature lists