Electronic Literature Publishing in Europe: Sample Cases from Italy

The publication of electronic literature, globally, has taken place outside of the traditional literary publishing field. The main modes have been either self publication by the authors, or, literary online magazines and portals. E-­lit competitions have played also a role. In a situation where no established publication system exists, the authors have had to invent new publication strategies. The activity has been characterised by noncommerciality, collegialism, and close connection to academia. Publication of electronic literature has often been happening side by side with critical writing on electronic media. Also, a considerable amount of electronic writing is such by nature, that it comes close to visual and auditive arts. It has then found publication channels through these non-­?literary connections: many of the works have been presented in art gallery settings. In our project, an investigation on organized European electronic literature publication and distribution will be carried on. This means that self-­?publication by authors will be excluded. The investigation will cover the following forms: ? electronic literature magazines and portals online ? electronic literature competitions ? collections ? art?sites including electronic literature works In our conference presentation, we will first present the main principles of the survey. Then we will proceed to present sample cases from two European countries, Italy and Finland. The Italian cases are the publishing and archiving portal maintained by Caterina Davinio (http://xoomer.virgilio.it/cprezi/caterinadav.html) and the "Italian-ELO", OLE - Officina di Letteratura Elettronica by Lello Masucci (http://www.lellomasucci.net). The Finnish cases are the e-­poetry publishing portal Nokturno.org (http://www.nokturno.org) and the on-­demand publishing house Ntamo by Leevi Lehto (http://ntamo.blogspot.com/). A talk held together with Raine Koskimaa.