E-Lit Competition Winners
Electronic literature (E-Lit) is born-digital, made on the computer and read on the computer so that its computational processes are part of its poetics. From Flash poetry to augmented reality, interactive fiction to hypertext, games to Netprov, electronic literature encompasses a wide variety of efforts to employ new media to create literary art.
Each year we run a student competition in electronic literature: student winners earn a cash prize and showcase their work at the annual DH Showcase in May.
2025 Competition
Winner — It’s a tie!!
Jon Tobias, “Execution_Line.Py”
Graduate student in the MFA program in Creative Writing, Poetry (English and Comparative Literature Department)
A poem written in Python for Processing. The poem is an ars poetica investigating the poetic line. The program produces an image of a 100% erased version of the poem that appears in the print section. Just a bunch of white lines on a black screen. In between the lines of code is a “meta” poem commenting on the printed poem. It’s three poems occupying a single space. The intention of this poem is to highlight the line as metaphoric and literal. In this piece, the poetic line isn’t just something you read, it’s something you see and something you’re physically dragged through. I also used the instruction of the creation of “whitespace” to highlight that white space is something constructed. It is intentional, not something left over. Python is a language that depends on white space to function unlike some codes that can be a single never-breaking line of instruction. The meta poem is my homage to Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Travesty Generator (2019). I wanted the coder to seem snarky and opinionated about the work they are writing. I wanted this to be an opportunity to remind the reader that in between every line of code is a coder who thinks and feels and has opinions about things which may be very different from what they are making. The printed poem is in tercets with one quatrain. I chose tercets because I believe the form lends itself to a sense of reaching/discovery. Couplets turn in on themselves and quatrains are contemplative, but tercets are these beautiful in between lines that are in the process of understanding something but never quite get there. They’re my favorite.
The jurors say:
“This a clever meta-poem, or as it calls itself, three poems occupying one space: The printed poem (that displays in the Console but is erased), the erased poem, and the poem in the code. I suspect there are even more poems in here than even the author indicates, for the author statement is probably another judas goat, meant to lead us away from realizing that the author has led us on and, as the kids say, ‘killed it,’ conceptually speaking, of course.”
“’Execution_Line.Py is a wonderfully witty poem with bite that calls attention to specific locations within the work that some may overlook; the white space, margins, so that we consider the effect these “parts” of the poem in this modality have on the piece.”
“I found Execution_Line.Py moving--actually, it's tonally dynamic. I laughed aloud.--but also compelling conceptually. The description of the piece was smart and helped me to understand the ways that the text was speaking to the subject of ‘creation’ whether that be a poem or code.”
Kasside Sahagun-Escalante, “Qui[lt]ck.Resp.on(:off)se.C-Ode info.png”
Graduate student in the MA program (English and Comparative Literature Department)
This work is a digital quilt made of over 300 unique QR codes or “patches.” In order to access each QR code, readers need to zoom in or “rip” the quilt apart in order to access each individual piece. As they continue to explore the work, readers will hopefully see the connections between the different codes and begin “restitching” the quilt, realizing the necessity of each small piece in the larger quilt and the multiplicity of voices that go into acts of creation. The hope of the work is that as readers explore they will discover and form new connections that span across a variety of fields and subjects, and perhaps also discover personal elements about the author herself.
The jurors say:
“This crazy quilt of QR codes offers an ingenious hypertextual experience that stitches together links to pages from Project Gutenberg texts to notes on JoAnn Fabrics closing to entire novels. As you pull the quilt over you, you begin to see the connections from code to culture to communities, not just any communities but ones bound largely by women with sewing needles and strings of code.”
“Qui[it]ck”: an innovative use of QR codes to “patchwork” a personal and social narrative, creating connection, and strengthening connections through each individual QR code. This piece is probably my personal favorite as I see it as a nod to Shelley Jackson’s PG: it evokes the idea of an ever-evolving, stitched-together nature of narratives and of identities. In order to see some parts of the quilt—or an identity-- other parts must be altered or stripped away (by zooming in and out).”
Honorable Mention — It’s a tie!!
Vide Sale-Reed, “Bread and Circuits”
Graduate student in the MFA program in Creative Writing, Fiction (English and Comparative Literature Department)
This is a work in-progress hypertext story.
The jurors say:
“’Bread & Circuits’ makes excellent use of the Twine modality, creating a narrative that is both nonlinear and told through a variety of ephemera, like a grocery store receipt or an email message. The narrative ruminates on issues of algorithmic coding and the gaps between AI and human cognition, particularly as it relates to human-to-human connection. ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
“’Bread & Circuits’ is a clever collection of meditations on our machine-mediated lives”
Em Teaze, “From Me to You”
Graduate student in the MFA program in Creative Writing, Poetry (English and Comparative Literature Department)
This is a work in-progress videopoem.
The jurors say:
“‘From Me to You,’ is the piece I found most moving. The epistolary mode works so well with the imagery and spare "music" and the handwriting to suggest intimacy and longing--elegiac even. If I were to rank all the entries on artistry alone, this would be my number one choice.”
“This is a moving movie of film, text, and audio, richly layered to transport the viewer even if only for a moment into a meditative mood”
“A beautiful constellation of imagery, prose, and music—it left me wanting more... but perhaps the fleeting brevity is part of its overall appeal”
Previous Competition Winners
First Place: Robert Lang and Rachel Noe, “A Fine Madness”
Honorable Mentions: Marian Cuevas, "vivre" and Milagros Vilaplana, "Border Waters"
No competition was held this year.
First Place: Brent Ameneyro, “Luck”
Honorable Mention: Abigail Hora, "Not to Me" and Bilal Mohamed, “Lost Inside: A Digital Inquiry”
The competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
First Place: Jared Zeiders, “Ofermod V.2.2.6”
Honorable Mention: Brenda Taulbee, “Sensational Silence: Against Erasure”
First Place: Adrian Belmes, “Recursion”
Honorable Mentions: Marine Bernard, “NovaCorp” and Katie Chestnut, “Medusa’s Laughter”
First Place: Valorie Ruiz, “Brujerías”
Honorable Mention: Kristin Herr, "Blork the 60-Second Pet!"
First Place: Riley Wilson, “Driving Alone at Night”
Honorable Mention: Mariana Best, “Brave New Readers”
