The International Interactive Fiction Community

In this talk, I describe some details of how these communities have functioned over the years: What forums, chat systems, publications, competitions, directories, archives, and other sorts of institutions and traditions are used to build new aesthetic appreciations of IF, to enable people to learn more about programming, design, and writing, and to to connect IF authors and players. My analysis, which draws on my experience as a member of “the IF community” while also considering online artifacts and discourses could be helpful in other electronic literature communities. It will also consider how existing community activity could help to connect IF more effictively with poets, fiction writers, artists, and and others who work in creative computing.