Fiction 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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Extra-Terrestrial: A Television Pilot Script, Landon Adams

Symposium of Student Scholars

How do you make a home out of a place you don’t feel welcomed? This is the plight of Beatrix Ivy, a passionate fashionista, humanoid-martian who dreams of opening her own fashion business. The only issue: fashion does not exist on Mars. She impulsively decides to ditch her hypercritical mother in pursuit of Planet Earth. Destination? Paris, France. However, a GPS malfunction lands her in the unknown town of Paris, Georgia. Mistaken for a drag queen, Beatrix is met with hostility from the bigoted locals, including local darling SunRay, an equally talented fashion designer. Beatrix eventually finds companionship in a …

Power Dynamics And Oppression: Analyzing Structural Control In Suzanne Collins’S The Hunger Games, Hannah Micciolo

Capstone Showcase

The Hunger Games is a popular novel universe that describes a totalitarian dictatorship through the lens of the oppressed. Through the book, the viewer is given insight into how Panem operates the way it does even though the majority of its citizens are oppressed by the minority in a much more obvious manner. However, within modern society, the tactics used by the oppressors are much more ambiguous and distorted. This essay will explore the structures put in place by the Capitol in tandem with modern examples to mirror each other and increase awareness of the the tactics governments use both …

Hermanos, Sawyer Rodriguez

Symposium of Student Scholars

Script Logline: A recent college graduate must learn to start over and confront his past when he is put into witness protection

Fallen Kingdom: A Novella, Sarah Black

Scholars Week

Fallen Kingdom is a work of fiction that falls into the category of fantasy/romance. Exploring themes of PTSD and loss of self, we begin in a world on the brink of ruin. After The Fall, Scarlett finds herself in an unknown land, hunted, injured, and alone. She has few memories of her arrival or the time before--memories that become ever more frequent as a world of magic takes shape around her. Fallen Kingdom is a fast-paced, striking adventure that documents her struggle with responsibility, friendship, and love.

Void, Jaycylle Kayne A. Soto

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

The main driving force of the author to write the collection of flash fictions "Void" is to express people's different representations of feeling void. From the void we feel inside to the one that others make us feel. The goal of this collection is to let the readers know that they are not alone in feeling this kind of void represented in each literary piece. Moreover, this collection also includes unsettled and unsolved personal, family, and societal issues people of different classes and lifestyles may face and that creates a drastic change in an individual’s way of living. Throughout the …

West Texas Ghost Story, Clayton Bradshaw

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

"West Texas Ghost Story" explores the negative impacts of capitalism and patriarchal society on the well-being of individuals and the ability of families to remain intact under duress of such oppressive regimes. It follows the story of a young man growing up around the oil fields of West Texas in the 1990s as his father begins to hollow out and become a ghostly figure. The young man turns to art as a therapeutic outlet for this loss, eventually making his way to Marfa. The ghost story in question becomes one of metaphorical and perceived experience for the young man.

From Donna To Diane: Analyzing And Imitating The Art And Craft Of Suspense Fiction, Jamie Henderson

Campus Research Month

Abstract:

This study explores the art and craft of suspense fiction by analyzing foreshadowing and characterization, tracing the influence and imitation of the genre, and finally, showing the imitation of the structure and craft of a short suspense story in an original work by the author. The conclusion of the research states that, though foreshadowing and characterization are vital to the creation of suspense fiction, the most helpful tool in learning the art and craft of suspense is imitation.

Understanding Humanity: Demarginalizing The Intersection Of Black Masculinity And Feminity For The Psyche, Kandice Fowlkes

Symposium of Student Scholars

As the intersection of race and gender is a feat for the strong Black man and strong Black woman, the double edged sword is the deterioration of mental health overlooked by the need to maintain the guise of perfection. The social disadvantages of this intersection include a myriad of traumas such as financial stability, violence and oppression, and the internal stigma of judgment, which causes Black men and Women to delay or go undiagnosed for mental health disorders. In turn, this enables an unstable community to unite for mental health reform. Aside from seeking medical help, the conversation of mental …

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Scholars Week

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

A Glass Of Fresh, Clean Water From Lake Baikal, Raluca D. Comanelea

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

"A Glass of Fresh, Clean Water from Lake Baikal" is the short story that I will read and discuss as part of the creative writing panel for FWPCA 2021.

Breathe The Machine, Matt S. Roberts, Terri Witek, Teresa Carmody, Dengke Chen

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Breathe the Machine

interspecies morph edition featuring a video conference and solo or synched blow-ins

Teresa Carmody Dengke Chen Matt Roberts Terri Witek

The FaaS were future-oriented. Every day, they contemplated the question: what kind of ancestor will you be?

A collaborative group composed of a prose writer, new media artist, 3-D animator, and poet enter your personal computers and suggest that in this particularly viral moment, individual breaths + machines may be the closest we get to community touch. An animated video conference offers the project's conceptual framework, including questions about invasive species and intimacy in this new world …

Lulling Waters: A Poetry Reading For Real-Time Music Generation Through Emotion Mapping, Ashley Muniz, Toshihisa Tsuruoka

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Through a poetic narrative, “Lulling Waters” tells the story of a whale overcoming the loss of his mother, who passed away from ingesting plastic, as he attempts to escape from the polluted oceanic world. The live performance of this poem utilizes a software system called Soundwriter, which was developed with the goal of enriching the oral storytelling experience through music. This video demonstrates how Soundwriter’s real-time hybrid system was able to analyze “Lulling Waters” through its lexical and auditory features. Emotionally salient words were given ratings based on arousal, valence, and dominance while the emotionally charged prosodic features of the …

Digital Orihon (デジタル折り本): The (Un)Continuous Shape Of The Novel., David T.H. Wright

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In ‘The Aesthetic of Bookishness in Twenty-first Century Literature’, Jessica Pressman (2009) proposes that the aesthetic of ‘bookishness’ is as old as the book form. The Tale of Genji (源氏物語) by Murasaki Shikibu is often considered the world’s first modern novel. The text is presented as an ‘orihon’ (折本): a ‘long strip of paper that is pleated into a stack, with a cover pasted at each end of the stack’ (Atwood, 10). ‘Orihon’ is a combination of the Japanese word for ‘fold’ (折) and ‘book’ or ‘source’ (本). The orihon is often also referred to as an ‘accordion’ book.

Digital …

Twine And The Challenge To Reading, Stuart Moulthrop

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The article considers the Twine story-game platform in relation to important critiques of earlier forms of electronic literature (specifically hypertext) from which it descends. Arguments for the significance of Twine are made based on aesthetic approaches (the fusion of literature and game culture) and the refinement of writing itself.

Play this paper in Twine

Non Infinite Stories: How Digital Allow To Create Infinite Reconformations Of A Text?, David Núñez

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Last year I presented at ELO, in Ireland, the Artistic piece "Bastard" a digital fiction that combine a fragmented novel to create 10x149 differents texts and optimized in 4 billions coherent stories with narrative structures. In Orlando we want to explain how the system works, theory and functioning, and invited all the members to produce they personal "infinite" fiction.

Non Infinite Stories is an electronic publishing house that creates a dynamic hyperliterature system to give each reader a unique book by using a digital combinatorial processes, specific narrative rules and optimization of fragmented works in chapters of short narrative blocks, …

A Sign Of The Times, Zoe Roswell

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

I drafted this short story for an assignment in my Creative Writing 102z course based on techniques we learned in class including estrangement but also it was inspired, in part, by Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams’ play touches on certain familial mental health struggles in each character that were deep rooted and I wanted to communicate the same effect. My story revolves around the present life and childhood of Charles, an underground boxer, who was orphaned at a young age due to both of his parents’ struggles with mental illness. Charles experienced his mother’s mental deterioration before and following …

What’S In A Name?: The Evolution Of The Female Identity In Shalimar The Clown, Jessica Barksdale

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

English Grammar: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Wendy Delk

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

Until Valhalla, Mr. Krebs, William J. Williford

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

Hold Them Down: Oppression Of Film Noir's Working Woman, Shaire Blythe

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

Introductory Paragraph:

The struggle for women’s rights and roles in society has been an ongoing battle, since the beginning, with Adam and Eve. The subjugation that was presented upon Eve, because of her fault and easiness to be deceived, has trailed behind mankind, and film noir would not be excluded. The femme fatale seems to play the role of what Eve started, seducing men with her sexuality to carry out wicked schemes and being the downfall of all men. Thus, men began to identify women as a threat to their very essence but, yet, still cannot resist the temptation women …

Daughters Of The Sun: "The Birth" (An Excerpt), Megan Lynn

Scholarly and Creative Works Conference (2015 - 2021)

“You have never heard of me before. You have never heard of me, but my name has come out of your mouth thousands of times.”

So begins my novel, Daughters of the Sun, the story of Jesus’s twin sister, Alleluia. Using the narrative framework seen in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Alleluia tells her story over one night—Saturday into Sunday morning—in an appropriated apartment facing a church. She weaves into her story another tale of women who have lived in shadows cast by the men around them, women whom history chose to vilify—Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was written out of …

Digital Libraries For Creative Writing, Pilar G. Carcedo

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

This research has focused on the changes of paradigm that digital technology and globalization have exerted in the study of the literary act. The methodology has been guided by the constant integration of literary, pedagogical and technological reflection around Digital Literature and Creative Writing.

In our Research Group LEETHI we have created different Webs to approach Literature in the classroom. One of the is our DIGITAL LIBRARY TROPOS. It has developed innovative approaches, and anticipated uses of the computer, highlighting both the limits and the rich potential of the digital. Always creative, it continues to propose new possibilities, as a …

Digital Demonstrations: Examinations Of Protests And Politics In Cory Doctorow’S Young Adult Fiction, Jacob Brown

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Within this paper, I intend to examine the manner by which author and blogger Cory Doctorow utilizes complex themes of digital labor exploitation and intellectual property law within his young adult fiction in order to bring about positive social change, with particular attention paid to the 2008 novel Little Brother and its 2013 sequel Homeland, the 2010 novel For the Win, the 2012 novel Pirate Cinema, and 2014’s In Real Life, a graphic novel written by Doctorow and illustrated by Jen Wang. Throughout Doctorow’s realistic depictions of slightly-fictionalized versions of contemporary life and embellishments of near-future …

Wilderness, Kathryn E. Bucolo

Celebration

The collection of short stories I have written focuses on how people process (or do not process) tragedy, especially as related to themes of grief, memory, and faith. Most of the stories I have written are dysfunctional narratives in that they do not necessarily provide solid conclusions or solutions for the characters or readers, reflecting current trends in literature to move away from the didactic and moralistic in favor of the ambiguous and unstable, the hopeless and sorrowful. In "Wilderness", one of the pieces I wrote for my collection, Robert struggles with the death of his wife when he realizes …