Writer Queries

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Queries

Query: Jeff Wiedner asks: "I'm interested in finding out about new media/hypertext writing courses, in particular those focusing on fiction writing. Are there any that folks have found interesting/useful/worthwhile?"

Query: Elayne Zalis writes, "I'm beginning a research project on autobiographical and biographical texts designed for the Web and am looking for innovative examples. Genres may include diaries, journals, memoirs, letters, travelogues, self-portraits, tributes, memorials, creative self-representations, and hybrid forms. The texts may be fictional or 'real.' I'm particularly interested in hypertextual /hypermedia approaches."

Query: Jill Walker asks: "I'm doing some work on stories that use emails in addition to web/hypertext - I'm aware of http://onlinecaroline.com, and http://emailshows.com and http://two-minutes.com (click the admin only link to get to the email archives) - but I expect this has been used other places as well? The stories I've found that use email seem pretty geared towards a soap-opera style narrative, and I'm curious as to whether email's been used in more - uh, well, literary ways?"

Query: Carolyn Guertin is designing a creative writing course for the new media called 'Visualizing Narrative' and is looking for recommendations of "articles (print or online) that have proved particularly useful in terms of discussing the 'process' of electronic writing in a classroom context, rather than simply the technology or the theory."

Query:Illinois Wesleyan professor Wes Chapman is looking for examples of short, argumentative hypertext essays written for the Web. He writes,

"I'm tired of getting hypertexts that are really linear papers in disguise. I'd like to give them more models to work from. For my purposes, a good example should be 1) short, 2) definitely hypertextual (it has to be discernible why this text HAD to be written on the computer and not the page), 3) more or less comprehensible by first-year students, and 4) argumentative (whatever that means; some of the essays we read in preparation for this assignment--Birkerts, Postman, people like that--suggest that emedia are inimical to argument, and the assignment itself asks them to think about how traditional argument does or does not have to be changed to suit electronic media). I've directed my students to four examples so far: Stuart Moulthrop's "Pillars of Wisdom" and "It's Not What You Think," Nancy Kaplan's " E-literacies," and Mark Bernstein's "Hypertext Gardens." I'd like more models, though, especially of shorter (smaller, fewer-noded, whatever ya call it) arguments.

Query:Willard McCarty is seeking recommondations of essays, online or otherwise, on the the effects of hypertextual linking on compositional practice, and on the design of more sophisticated linking. He writes that

The more one thinks about the hypertextual link, the cruder an instrument it appears. How subtle and various by contrast (and of course how problematic) are the ways in which one can in print say "see X"!

Author query: Luis Arroyo is seeking information using use Storyspace in historical research. Prof. Arroyo earned a Ph.D. in U.S. history at UCLA in 1979, and studies Mexican American labor history (including a book in progress on the transformation of "Cinco de Mayo" (May 5th) from a Mexican-immigrant celebration to an "American" holiday (a la St. Patrick's Day). He writes that:

I am looking forward to using StorySpace to organize my voluminous notes.... I am also planning to use StorySpace to create an electronic version of the Cinco de Mayo manuscript, containing numerous hypertext links, and including music, video, pictures, and archival materials.

Query: Friedrich Block seeks " hypermedial projects which have transformed or translated modernist texts into hypermedial versions - likethe multimedial hypertext-version of Okopenko's Lexikonroman or the digital reconstructions of antique to modernist text machines by Florian Cramer."

Pif seeks cyberotica: Pif Magazine is now accepting submissions of erotic hypertext and hypermedia (fiction and poetry) for inclusion in its April issue.

Query: Adrian Miles (adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au), creator of the Bowerbird hypertext search engine, seeks advice on appropriate translations into German, Italian, French, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Spanish, and other languages of a number of common hypertext terms, including:

hypertext
hypermedia
cybertext
cyberculture
node
lexia
ergodic

Query: Robert Kendall, author of A Life Set for Two, has a new Web poem available online. He asks, " If anyone could take a quick look at it (it's short) and tell me whether they think it is a hypertext or not, I would be grateful." Thanks, Rob!

Query: Verena Berger is seeking links on Spanish and French hypertext literature. (A fine resource, in both Spanish and English, is Hipertulia)

Query:Claudia Ferradas Moi writes that:

"Ever since I phoned Eastgate systems on a visit to the US in 1994, I've been hooked on hyperfiction. I teach English as a foreign language in Buenos AIres, Argentina and Literature at EFL Teacher Traning College. ...I'm starting my dissertation I'd like to explore the possibilities of using "hypertext readers" in the EFL / ESL class. Are there any such texts available? Is anybody doing work on "graded" hyperfiction for readers whose command of English is limited?

Query:Southampton's Les Carr asks, "Can you point me at Web sites which put links in the body of their text? Many sites," he notes, "use links as navigational sidebars, while fewer place links in the flow of the discourse. Scientific American is one example: can Hypertext Kitchen readers identify others?" Email L.Carr@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Query: Hypertext student Wendy Kinal writes that she is "preparing a hypertext project for children. Do you know of any other such work or a possible resource to find child-oriented pieces?"

Query: Deena Larsen asks, how should writers sign hypertexts? Should writers autograph the cardboard covers? The disk? This is especially puzzling for shrink-wrapped packages (like Eastgate's) and jewel-case CDs.

Query:David Silver (University of Maryland) is seeking information on cyberculture courses in colleges and universities for the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. If you teach or know about such a course, he asks that you please fill out an online form. Thanks Carolyn Guertin!

Query: Jeff Nyhoff (Calvin College) is looking for "theoretical writings analyzing the new relationship between textual and non-textual media in multimedia hypertext."

Query: Editor Susana Pajares Tosca is seeking reviews of hypertexts for Hipertulia. Of particular interest are reviews of classic hypertexts, and reviews of hypertexts in languages other than English.

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