Category Archives: News

Opening Up Digital Fiction Competition Winners

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We had a fantastic evening in Bangor as we awarded the winners in the Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition. We were able to livestream the whole thing, and it’s been recorded for posterity, so if you missed it, hop on over to YouTube to see the whole event. Tweet us at @ReadDigFic and use #OpeningUpDF to let us know what you think!

The slides from the presentation can be seen here (including all the shortlists and winners).

The winners are:

Honourable mentions went to:

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who sent in entries! We had 110 entries from 24 countries, with 34 student entries. We were so pleased by the quality of the entries we received, and all the new digital fiction readers we were able to reach.

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Opening Up Digital Fiction Competition Prizes: Date Set for 25 May 2017

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Announcing the date and location for the Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition prize-giving. Winners will be announced and prizes awarded. This should be a great chance for writers, researchers, and readers to get together to celebrate the digital fiction that was submitted, so please add it to your calendars!

Thursday 25 May 2017, 7pm
Main Arts Lecture Theatre, Bangor University
College Road, Bangor

Enter our Writing Competition!

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We have just launched the first ever competition aimed at finding the best new examples of “popular” digital fiction!  Our “Opening Up Digital Fiction” aims to discover digital fiction that appeals to mainstream audiences. We are accepting submissions in English and in Welsh and looking for works by all kinds of writers from rookies to veterans. See the Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition for more information on what we are looking for, what you can win, and how to enter.

Typewriter console by Spacefriend-T

Readers, Digital Fiction, and Immersion

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We’ve had a great summer, presenting our research on immersion at three international conferences: the Electronic Literature Organization conference in Victoria (Canada), the Mind-Media-Narrative conference in Warsaw (Poland), and the Poetics and Linguistics Association conference in Cagliari (Sardinia).

Using empirical methods to explore the way that readers experience Judi Alston and Andy Campbell’s digital fiction WALLPAPER, we’ve found that immersion isn’t as straight-forward as current theories suggest. Rather than immersion being something that is completely totalising or enveloping, we’ve found that it can actually be intermittent with readers’ attention switching between different aspects of the fiction. We thus see immersion as a multidimensional experience in which the reader is pushed and pulled inside and outside a fictional world. We’re planning to publish two articles on this work. Watch this space for details.

PI Alice Bell
Walk-through of WALLPAPER
PI Alice Bell and Researcher Isabelle van der Bom
Alice Bell and Isabelle van der Bom

Photos of Alice Bell and Isabelle van der Bom at the PALA conference, July 2016.

Our Favourite Places feature

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Thanks to Kathryn Hall over at Our Favourite Places for her lovely piece on “The Future of Literature?” programme. We’re delighted to bring a bit of interactivity to Sheffield, and we hope you’ll join us at our events.

The “Introduction to Digital Fiction” is sold out, but there are still a few tickets available for the Guided Tour of the exhibition, the Creative Writing master class with Christine Wilks, and the Pop-Up Book Club.

All events are free, but we do ask that you register in advance due to space restrictions in the venues.

New date for “Introducing Digital Fiction” event

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Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have to move the “Introducing Digital Fiction” event in Sheffield Central Library to 21 October. The time remains the same (2.30-4pm). We apologise for any inconvenience caused to those who have previously registered.

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, here’s an introduction to the session:

If you have little or no experience with digital fiction and would like to learn more about this exciting new way of reading, come to our introductory workshop with Dr. Jen Smith. We’ll read a few stories together, and then we’ll have a chat about what makes them different from traditional printed books. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required due to the number of computers available.

Registration remains open–we look forward to seeing you at the Local Studies Library on the 21st of October!

Kate Pullinger event booking now open

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The 2014 Off the Shelf Festival programme has been launched, and bookings are now open for all of our digital fiction events, including Kate Pullinger’s talk: ‘Beyond the Book: Digital Fiction’. 

Kate will be speaking on 12th October from 2-3.30pm in “Showroom 5” at The Showroom (15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX).

Over the past decade, new hybrid forms of literature have begun to emerge as writers and artists experiment with digital technologies. As well as writing novels and short stories in print, Kate Pullinger has long been involved with thinking about what it means for writing to move off the page and onto screens. She’ll discuss her award-winning digital projects Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths as well as her WWI Centenary participatory project, Letter to an Unknown Soldier.

Free tickets are available from The Showroom Box Office and can be reserved in person or by calling 0114 275-7727.