Creative Writing Commons^™

"The First Web Novel At 30: The Collection And The Creative Process", Robert Arellano, Scott Rettberg

ELO (un)supervised 2026

Summer 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Sunshine '69, recognized as the first novelistic hypertext fiction published on the web. While the full work remains accessible online—an "(un)supervised" preservation achievement in itself—the archive remains split between boxes and memory. This conversation between the work's creator and a major scholar in electronic literature documents both specific preservation challenges and systemic patterns in what the field chooses to preserve.

Topics include: figuring out web-born composition before established methodologies existed; the three decades of technical decisions that kept a 1996 work alive through format obsolescence and server migrations; and what gets lost …

The Question Is A Node: Online Quizzes As Interactive Non-Fiction, Michael Merriam

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The quiz is the most widely deployed form of interactive text in education. Even when it is not digitally administered, it presents a prompt, receives a response, and contains within it a formula determining the consequences of that response. A wrong answer is taken as a failure of learning (not mere recall) and, by virtue of their quasi-digital objectivity, a batch of low quiz scores might warn of difficulty in reaching benchmarks. Ergo, quizzes embody the automation of the supervisory function of the instructor, and the supervision of curricula. 

Quiz questions have something in common with nodes in digital interactive …

Reacting To Electronic Literature In Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, Faith Samuel Bassey

ELO (un)supervised 2026

Electronic literature is still quite new in our country, and we do not have enough manpower to drive a literary or scholarly movement.  We need to introduce these concepts to many people; however, we do not have the people we need who know the field well enough to pass on their passion and prowess to get others enthused about electronic literature.

In this talk, I will describe the ways that I have presented my work, The Water Seller, Mai Ruwa, with Deena Larsen. In October 2025,  I presented this work in an in-person conference in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra …

Vibe Coding: Ai, Digital Text Recycling, And The Remediation Of Digital Poetry, Yohanna Joseph Waliya

ELO (un)supervised 2026

This paper theorises Vibe Coding as a novel method of AI-assisted creative practice within electronic literature. Vibe Coding describes an affective mode of communication with AI that enables coding via natural-language prompts, in which the author collaborates with generative AI systems to recycle, remediate, and reconfigure existing digital texts into new poetic forms, including interactive animations. Rather than treating code as a fixed procedural logic, Vibe Coding focuses on rhythm, intuition, and affect as central compositional forces shaping both textual production and computational interaction. Relying on theories of remediation, digital recycling, and posthuman authorship, the paper examines how AI functions …

Compressed Cinema As A Study In Llm Latent Spaces, Mallen Clifton

ELO (un)supervised 2026

In his article “Spec Acts” (2021), Matthew Kirschenbaum analyzes the AI-generated novel 1 the Road to develop his titular concept of the spec act, “the future in its multitudes collapsing into an actionable present.” With the proliferation of texts produced by generative AI and subsequent critical analyses of them, one element in particular calls for further theorization: “the future in its multitudes,” or more directly, the latent space. This echoes arguments by critics such as Antonio Somaini, who offered his own “Theory of Latent Spaces” last year. However, where Somaini’s attention is towards visual culture, I turn mine to the …

(Un)Easily Writing The Future, Stuart Moulthrop, Judith Pintar, John G. Mcdaid

ELO (un)supervised 2026

General Abstract: This panel brings together three experienced digital writers who have recently begun to explore Language Models and transformers in creative and academic practice.  Each of us will comment on recent experience and projects, reflecting on how these technologies alter the way we think of ourselves as writers and teachers.

[1] Judith Pintar, "The Non-applicability of Wishing due to Lack of Capacity".

Pintar will discuss her experience of facilitating Gemini AI in a Rogerian therapy session with an Eliza bot written in the Inform programming language. The session is occasionally interrupted with a meta-conversation with Gemini regarding its responses. …

Out Of This World: An Exoplanetary Workshop, Monica Storss, Bart Kuipers

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The workshop investigates how scientific constraints can productively defamiliarize human experience and create new frameworks for creativity and expression. Participants will produce original work while considering broader questions about environment, perception, and cultural formation in speculative contexts, and how the arts, sciences, and technology inform each other in relational multiplicities. This generative workshop explores how astronomical data from confirmed exoplanets can generate new poetic forms and linguistic constraints. Participants will examine how exoplanetary conditions can shape language, metaphor, and narrative structure. We'll develop from writing exercises that respond to non-terrestrial physical parameters: alternative light spectra, gravitational variations, and atmospheric compositions. …

Singulars: Performing The Reverse Turing Test, Halim Madi

ELO (un)supervised 2026

Singulars is an ongoing series of performance systems in which I co-create poetry with a language model trained on an anthology of English poetry alongside my own writing. Across three works—carnation.exe, versus.exe, and reinforcement.exe—I stage live reinforcement loops in which my poems and the model’s responses compete for audience votes. The audience functions as an embodied feedback mechanism, shaping the evolution of both the machine and the human poet in real time.

This paper examines what happens when a poet becomes both author and training data. Drawing from creativity research, metacognition, and social cognition, I reflect …

Making The Writer’S Project, Alex Calderwood

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The Writer’s Project is a series of playful text editors which intervene in the act of writing in unexpected, challenging, and unusual ways. Some of the editors are conceptual experiments in user interface design: What if the editor asked you if you were sure before committing to each word? What if the delete key was not functional? Others editors are provocations that take aim at the conditions and AI-mediated writing, built to create a tension between writerly agency and system resistance. These involve placing writers into different configurations with text streams, for instance by turning prior writings into a Tetris-like …

Connected/Disconnected, Emery Beckman

ELO (un)supervised 2026

With the rise of AI, scholars are grappling with how it fits into their field and determining how authorship plays a role in the assistance of these tools. I argue that AI can be deemed a digital companion to creative and interactive design. Anthropic has recently launched Claude Code, a coding assistant for various projects. This talk explores how agentic AI can offer digital assistance while advocating for human thought to remain at the forefront. This talk will analyze and demo an interactive site and explore a collection of AI-assisted poems built alongside Claude Code titled "Connected/Disconnected." It will explore …

Long Haulers, Zachary Roush

2026 Symposium

Long Haulers is a science-fiction short story.

Two long-haul space delivery drivers agonize about their love lives with a sarcastic android bartender.

Tactical Seagulls: A Multimedia Children's Story, Clara Showalter

Celebration of Research

This story is true. Well, sort of...

Tactical Seagulls is an in-process children's book that imaginatively and humorously (and yes, a tad chaotically) retells a true story about seagulls trying to steal food from beachgoers. But it's more than just a quirky story. Tactical Seagulls began its life as a means to help teach new vocabulary to children in a non-obvious and enjoyable way. Throughout the process, the vision for this book expanded into something more: it is intended to help revive the practice of the family read-aloud through the intentional incorporation of distinct character voices and personalities, expressive illustrations, …

Simulating Rewriting Style: Algorithmic Reproduction Of Camus’S Literary Voice In Machine-Generated Texts, Peter Akongfeh Agwu Ph.D

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association Conference

Virtual Presentation

Embers Of Hesitation, Alexandro Salas Rosales

Student Scholar Symposium

Alexandro Salas-Rosales’ collection Embers of Hesitation explores the rise and fall of a person who wants to change the world. The speaker begins with little to no motivation, and evolves a passion for both justice and love. Throughout the collection, the speaker grows more ambitious about the possibilities of a new love and a more optimistic tomorrow, even while they can be disgusted by the indifference of their peers. The speaker’s unchecked ambition grows and solidifies the connection between self isolation and mental illness. In Embers of Hesitation, Salas-Rosales follows the speaker’s trajectory from disengaged observer to zealot.

The Star Compass, Megan Gables

Student Scholar Symposium

In Megan Gables’ manuscript, The Star Compass, Gables’ character, Cole Summers, endeavors to prepare for grad school, but she is rejected by her dream program, the London Lost Tribe College of Archaeology. Even though her application has been denied, Cole discovers that she will be allowed to participate in an archaeological expedition funded by the London Lost Tribe College of Archaeology. The expedition would attempt to follow a compass that some claim can navigate star charts and is rumored to have been involved in actions regarding World War II. Cole fears joining the expedition, because she suspects that the …

Things That Just Happen, Naomi Hollans

Student Scholar Symposium

Naomi Hollans’s nonfiction piece, “Things That Just Happen,” narrates a young woman’s experience with tragedy. After her grandfather’s death from cancer, the young woman receives another shock: her mother is diagnosed with cancer. While her mother endures chemo and the young woman prepares for college, her 4-year-old brother is also diagnosed with cancer. In the midst of these bafflingly painful circumstances, the narrator, her peers, hairdressers, and Sunday school teachers seek an explanation for suffering. Hollans’s reflection examines the human need to understand pain and discusses the various motivations for asking “why?” in response to grief. “Things That Just Happen” …

Change Over Time, Seth Wright

Student Scholar Symposium

No abstract provided.

Divinely Woven, Lily Robinette

Student Scholar Symposium

The relationship between science and faith has often been viewed as contradictory, with individuals typically aligning with one perspective or the other. However, a deeper examination reveals that these two ideologies are not independent but are interconnected parts of the greater tapestry of life. This paper takes the audience on a journey through the thought process of a chemistry student of the spiritual and physical being affirming of each other rather than competing ideas. It delves into the concept of complex interactions of atoms and the purposeful design of life that suggest that the universe is not a product of …

Message In A Bottle, Ellie Harwood

Student Scholar Symposium

In her poetry collection “Message in a Bottle”, Ellie Harwood explores the relationships we maintain with each other, animals, and nature. Through the poems in this collection, Harwood examines how we as humans simultaneously harm one another and our fragile ecosystem while seeking love and belonging in those very relationships and spaces. By contrasting the evolutionary journey of whales with the rampant development of technology in the poem “Whale Song”, or through portraying the desire to flee from somebody you love deeply in “Bedhead”, Harwood highlights the many contradictions and conflicts that come with being alive (and the numerous ways …

Animal Man: Morrison's Reflection On The Author, Ellie Harwood

Student Scholar Symposium

Grant Morrison’s Animal Man debuted in DC Comics in 1988. For seven years as its author, Morrison explored themes of animal rights, conservationism, postmodernism, existentialism, and even free will all through their careful deconstruction of the superhero genre. In “Animal Man: Morrison’s Reflection on the author”, Ellie Harwood analyzes major portions of Morrison’s comic to identify their commentary on the relationship between people, animals, and fictional characters, and the moral ramifications of those relationships. Harwood achieves this through identifying the similarities between how Morrison portrays animals in the comic, as well as how they portray their own characters on a …

When It Calls You, Layla Al Sadoon

Student Scholar Symposium

Layla Al-Sadoon’s collection “when it calls you” explores the intersection of religion and womanhood. Al-Sadoon’s speaker compares the ambiguous relationship of her body and the earth, even when she is unaware of the positive and negative movements between both. “when it calls you” situates itself in a wilderness that carries the both speaker and audience into a feeling of isolation and a demystification of romance and wildness. The speaker grapples with her identity as she encounters the unknown within herself, and the representations of femininity she recognized and fears.

Pain Is A Gift, Hannah Fritsch

Student Scholar Symposium

Hannah Fritsch’s poetry collection, “Pain is a Gift,” explores what it means to live every day with pain. The poems look at many aspects of suffering, from the invisible psychological burden and despair it can bring to acceptance and hope. Using word pictures and metaphors, Fritsch’s work invites readers to look through her eyes and see how pain can draw people together and birth new dreams.

Why The Dancer Laughs, Anna Summerville

Student Scholar Symposium

The short story “Why the Dancer Laughs” explores the gradual mental and physical decay of a professional dancer, as she struggles to come to terms with a new life in which a chronic illness slowly takes the power from her legs. Weaving through her grief and regret in an introspective first person perspective, the story explores themes of change and holding onto the past, using a statue of a dancer in her family room as a foil between its preserved state and her deteriorating form. Overall, “Why the Dancer Laughs” aims to answer the question: How do we find the …

Presenting, Camille Floyd

Student Scholar Symposium

In Camille Floyd’s collection, “Presenting,” the lyric speaker describes her internalized gaze, obsession with connection and understanding, and modes of presenting to others. Floyd’s work examines the feminine experience in different moments and spaces. The collection features the speaker wrestling with how she relies on and trusts in memory, religion, and the normalized rules around movement and being.

Proper Stance, Kassie Lane

Playwriting Contest

Setting: An unoccupied park at midday. Honking, people, and other city sounds can be heard in the background. Bianca and Timothy are walking towards the spot under the railroad bridge that goes over the park, where the rest of their small dance troupe is waiting.

Actors: Jamiya Haynes; Nicholas Washington; Matthew Sagols

Stage Directions: Hannah Grimm

Scorpion, Breane Barrios

Playwriting Contest

A young couple struggles with an unwanted intruder.

Director: Corinna Rodriguez

Actors: Chrissy Graham; Jimmy Kalal

Stage Director: Ryan Cosillo

Resilient Wild Violets, Bee Bishop

Playwriting Contest

Characters:

LESLIE is butch woman around late fifties/early sixties and is the owner of a local floral arrangement shop “The Green Carnation” that has been running since 1969.

DOROTHY is a frantic woman in her late teens/early twenties looking for some gardening help

Director: Morgan Erickson

Actors: Maddie Poorman; Lexi Schiro; Ethan Diaz

Stage Directions: Ethan Diaz

Her Hair, Avery Smith

Playwriting Contest

SETTING: Inside Keira’s bedroom. A door on the left side, a twin-sized bed in the back corner, and a desk with a full-body mirror on the right side of the room.

Director: Bre Auriemme

Actors: Sophia Marino; Ross Dumont Snider

Stage Directions: Neela Lugo

Dance Partner, Basil Jaber

Playwriting Contest

Setting: A modest, cozy living room with a TV.

Director: Ashley Chavez

Actors: Elyse Byron, Taylor Baird

Fitness Instructor/Stage Directions: Katrina Spencer Fenner

Understanding Ai’S Potential In Creativity And Research, Chloe Albrecht, Natalie Pradia

Undergraduate Research Conference

We experimented with artificial intelligence (Al) to better understand its limitations, guiding principles, and ethical impacts in creative and academic research and writing. Our project's purpose was to explore if Al can only harm creative endeavors and should therefore remain separate from the arts. Our methodology involved prompting and re-prompting to compose a variety of texts, demonstrating that the use of Al for creative and academic works can involve critical thinking. This process included giving the Als broad-scope prompts and narrowing in on specific tasks with repetitive re-prompting. We applied this method to writing, gathering resources, and providing enough background …