Serge Bouchardon and Vincent Voickaert for ‘Loss of Grasp’
http://lossofgrasp.com/

Simon Kerr (student prize) for  ‘5Haitis’
http://ispysi.org.uk/5Haitis/output/5Haitis.html

We had an a excellent evening, with fascinating conversation between JR Carpenter, Dan Franklin, Sophie Rochester, and Matt Locke, about the past, present and future of writing and publishing.

We also had great fun trying to get Skype to work when Serge called in while I was about to talk to Simon! Very good.

The competition has been a brilliant experience – to see so much innovative and genuinely beautiful work being produced around the world is a real thrill.

My sincere thanks go out to JR for her inspiring creative work and her participation last night; to Matt for so ably chairing the panel; to Dan for supporting us and being interested in the eclectic work we are promoting; to Sophie for covering us so well on The Literary Platform, and for particpating as a judge and panelist; to Christine Wilks for being such a dedicated and insightful judge (as well as a great writer); and last but not least to Andy Campbell for being a judge, and designing and running all the web spaces that enabled this competition to happen – Andy is a pioneering digital writer too. Thank you all so much!

Thanks of course to all the writers who entered their work. We do feel that new-media has so much to offer to storytelling and that we are still seeing only the early beginnings – there is so much to come.

Roll on 2012! Please keep writing your stories and entering your work to our event.

Jim Pope

Main Prize

He Said She Said – Alan Bigelow (USA)

Loss of Grasp Serge Bouchardon and Vincent Volckaert (France)

88 Constellations for Wittgenstein David Clark  (Nova Scotia)

Circle Caitlin Fisher (Ontario)

Welcome to Pine Point - Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons (Vancouver)

Student Entries

Chasing Pandora – Emily Devereux, Allyson Cikor, Trent Redmond, Mathew Vickery  (Alberta Canada)

5 Haitis – Simon Kerr  (Nottingham)

Maybe Make Some Change – Aaaron A. Reed  (Santa Cruz California)

Unravelled –   Spenser Wain, Zac Urness, Kollin Branicki  (Alberta)

Sophie Rochester is founder of The Literary Platform. She worked for five years at 4th Estate and Jonathan Cape (Random House) before moving to the digital agency GT London in 2000. In 2002, she joined Colman Getty working for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Hay Festival. Since 2007 she has worked as an independent literary consultant and in 2010 founded The Literary Platform, a website dedicated to exploring new platforms for literature.

J. R. Carpenter is a Canadian artist, performer, poet, novelist, new media writer and PhD researcher based in South Devon. She has been using the Internet as a medium for the creation and dissemination of non-linear narratives since 1993. Her digital work has been presented at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Rhizome ArtBase at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Arnolfini in Bristol, Inspace in Edinburgh, Palazzo delle arti Napoli in Naples, Machfeld Studio in Vienna, E-Poetry in Barcelona, The Web Biennial 2007 in Istanbul, Cast Gallery in Tasmania, and soundsRite in Australia. She is currently a practice-led PhD Researcher at University College Falmouth, Cornwall, working in the emerging and converging fields of performance writing, locative narrative, and digital literature. http://luckysoap.com

Dan Franklin (@digitaldanhouse) is Digital Editor at The Random House Group UK, where he is involved primarily in its ‘direct-to-digital’ publishing and cross-group initiatives including commissioning the Brain Shots: Summer of Unrest series, collaborating with Failbetter Games on an interactive narrative website for THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern, and projects for a range of authors including Richard Dawkins and Misha Glenny. He previously held the same title at indie publisher Canongate, where he worked on such projects as Nick Cave’s Bunny Munro app, Simon’s Cat for the PSP, and the ground-breaking iPad publication Why The Net Matters, by David Eagleman.

Panel chair: Matt Locke is currently Director of Storythings, a new company set up to explore storytelling across platforms, genres and contexts. He also set up and run The Story in his spare time, as he says, “an entirely selfish event which fortunately lots of other people seemed to enjoy.” Before this, Matt was Acting Head of Crossplatform at Channel 4, responsible for building engaging and innovative online projects around the channel’s key brands, including Big Brother, Skins, Misfits and Embarrassing Bodies. Previous roles have included Commissioning Editor for the award-winning Channel 4 Education, and Head of Innovation for BBC New Media & Technology.

If you would like an invitation to attend the awards event, please contact us via jpope@bournemouth.ac.uk

How are new media technologies changing the publishing industry?

The publishing industry is responding to new technologies; but I don’t think new media technologies are ‘changing’ it. It is true that new products – especially the iPad – stimulated development of book-related material for them, sometimes in a kneejerk, slightly panicked manner, and that social tools on the web and in eReader software has caused much discussion about the socialization of reading and whether there is an appetite amongst most readers to share their reading experiences in a more overt and immediate way online. Rather than publishers and other content providers being the cork on the technology stream I do think that the industry is being more selective and editorially-led about what it is creating for a digital environment.

So far the massive growth is in eBooks – cited as 10% of many publishers’ sales this year – where readers want their books in this new format, and everything else is publishers (in many guises from self-published authors to creative agencies to established corporations) prodding and pushing at the boundaries of what might become new paradigms and forms of ‘books’. Having said all that you’d be a fool to deny that devices with all the multimedia and online capabilities that smart phones have are changing all our lives. Publishers do need to provide experiences on them, but we need to foreground experiences over the technology that facilitates them.

How is the industry responding to the changing demands of consumers?

The most obvious and important response is digitizing backlists and making eBooks available alongside print versions. My concern is with commissioning into digital and one of the clear new avenues is e-Shorts; be it short stories or more pamphlet-like, responsive pieces of current affairs writing. There is an appetite for eBooks of up to 10,000 words at a price point of about £1. Or if you look at the Kindle charts there is an appetite for novels at rock bottom prices, but we’re finding that length here isn’t the issue as much as a perceived low-cost, therefore it’s less risky punt on a title.

Research suggests that many people don’t finish books they’re reading; there’s an opportunity here to commission short-form pieces which don’t work as print. Alongside this there are continuing forays into the app space with varying degrees of success. Utility (cookery, travel guides etc) is a ripe area, and big online-friendly brand authors too. Then there is the third way – where publishers are starting to get more involved in online narrative experiments, projects conceived and wholly native to the digital realm. There’s been lots of great work done in this area, but I can see it going more main stream, or at least becoming an interest to mainstream publishers.

How do you go about ensuring you are continually innovating and staying ahead of the trends?

Keeping vigilant about what’s going on in the publishing industry and perhaps most importantly outside of it. The rest of it is staying open to possibilities and being optimistic about trying new things in a not wholly naive way.

Why are you supporting Bournemouth University’s New Media Writing Prize?

It’s in all our interests to see what is being done in new media writing and I really hope to discover some blazing talent that would otherwise be completely off our radar as a mainstream publisher. I’m particularly interested in how the South/South-West is establishing itself as a hub of digital activity when a lot of people (and the government) is focusing on East London and ‘Silicon Roundabout’. I like to think of narrative engineering laboratories on the Cornish coast. It sounds like a beautiful future to me!

Christine Wilks is a British writer and artist who creates electronic literature and art for the web at crissxross.net and remixes at remixworx.net. She also designs and creates e-learning experiences with www.makeithappen.org.uk. Her digital fiction, ‘Underbelly’, won the MaMSIE Digital Media Competition 2011 and the New Media Writing Prize 2010. Her work is published in online journals and anthologies, including the ‘Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2′, ‘Hyperrhiz, Issue 8′ and ‘Third Hand Plays’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Blog. She has presented her work at international festivals, conferences and arts events. She has Masters Degrees in Creative Writing and New Media, and in Fine Art.

Sophie Rochester is founder of The Literary Platform. She worked for five years at 4th Estate and Jonathan Cape (Random House) before moving to the digital agency GT London in 2000. In 2002, she joined Colman Getty working for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Hay Festival. Since 2007 she has worked as an independent literary consultant and in 2010 founded The Literary Platform, a website dedicated to exploring new platforms for literature.

Andy Campbell is a digital writer and artist who has been working at the forefront of digital fiction since 1994. He is the founder of Dreaming Methods, an atmospheric new media writing website which has been pushing the boundaries of creative reading and writing for over 10 years. Previously a judge for the New Media Writing Prize 2010, he currently works as Digital Director for One to One Development Trust – a charity which produces innovative film, print and web design work – and this year became Creative Developer for the pioneering transmedia project Inanimate Alice.

Looking to submit a work of new media writing?
Visit the official site for the Prize here

Thus we need an event which gives a platform to writers who wish to tell stories in new media while demonstrating the true potential of new media. We believe we can showcase what new media really offers to the art of writing, narrative, storytelling. Ths competition celebrates the newness of new media. We aren’t interested in old media which has just been transferred onto a PC or tablet. We want work that has been conceived for new media: Joyce’s ‘afternoon’ could never be published as a printed book – it would simply not work. ‘Afternoon’ is multi-stranded, non-linear, tangential: it only exists in hyper-text form. So, we are hoping to see ‘writing’ that includes images, video, sounds, animation, hyper-links, interactivity of all kinds, non-linear structures, branching pathways, choice for the reader. And of course, we are looking for great stories, fiction or non-fiction, that engage and engross.

In 2010 we received entries from all around the world, showing us that new media writing is a fertile ground for creativity. Last year’s winner, Christine Wilks, showed that new media can do things that paper, film, TV, radio, and the stage cannot do: her ‘Underbelly’ beautifully blended words, with voices, animations and video to tell a complex story of women’s struggles with work and femaleness. This piece could not be a book, it is not a film, it could not be shown on TV, or broadcast on radio. It is NEW! So new that we still don’t have word for what this form is – personally, I’ll be sorry if we settle for ‘iBook’ – these works are not books, they simply are new, combining all previous forms.

With the New Media Writing Prize for 2011 we hope to see works that cannot exist in print or anywhere else but in new media, and maybe along the way we’ll come up with a new word for these new writings. We will certainly be helping to develop a form of writing that is exciting, challenging and fascinating.

Good luck to all the entrants in 2011.

Jim Pope

New Media Writing Prize Organiser

Here are a few observations about the ’state of the art’ which I think suggest potential for the future of the ‘book’. Of course, soon we’ll need a new word for the kind of writing that exists on computers, iPads, Kindles, mobile phones, etc,  but not in print.

Firstly, as Andy Campbell already said, new media writing at its best and most rewarding should not be able to exist on paper: some new media writing out there could easily be printed, and in some cases might even be better in print. So that isn’t really making best use of the potential of the colour monitors, sound, interactivity, animation, and so on, that new media can offer.

Secondly, books are already very easy to use: we all know how to turn a page and how to read a book (ie from left to right, top to bottom, then turn the page…). But some new media narratives (fiction and non-fiction) produced so far have been difficult to use: navigation from screen to screen, or page to page, if you like, is difficult to work out, or maybe doesn’t take you to a place that makes any kind of sense. So writers need to plan carefully how they build their navigation into their new media ‘books’.

Thirdly, a common problem with new media writing is that the story is hard to find or is not very interesting. No one reads a book, or watches a film for long, if an appealing story with interesting characters doesn’t begin to emerge. Digital ‘books’ should do for us what the best films, books, plays, radio programmes do: that is, they interest us, grab us so we don’t give up and find something else to do.

Finally, new media offers the chance for the ‘reader’ to interact, that is, make things happen on the screen, or decide what to read next, (or watch next, or listen to). But such reader involvement has to have a point. Think of it like this: if you turned the page of your book and it constantly led you to blank pages, or pages of gobbledy-gook, you’d pretty soon find a better book. So, in new media, everything that the ‘reader’ is asked to do (e.g. click on an icon, move forward to a new screen, watch a video clip) should mean something, should be helping to develop the story in some interesting way.

I hope that helps suggest what I believe ‘books’ need to become in the new media world, if they are to take their place amongst all the other established ways we ‘read’. We judges have already seen some fascinating examples of new media writing. Whichever piece ultimately wins the prize, I’m very pleased that the Poole Literary festival has initiated this platform for new-media writing.

Jim Pope – New Media Writing Prize judge – Senior Lecturer Media School, Bournemouth University

General Shortlist:

Naomi Alderman – The Winter House

Jim Andrews – On Lionel Kearns

Alan Bigelow – My Summer Vacation

Katharine Norman -  Yes Really

Anna Pitt   - The O2 Tales

Christine Wilks – Underbelly

Student Shortlist:

Lorenza Samuels -  Evidence

Emily Hollingsworth – Anonymous

The winners will be announced and Prizes consisting of an iPad and £250 given at a special ceremony which will form the climax of the first PLF. The ceremony will take place at Lighthouse – Poole’s Centre for the Arts at 7pm on Sunday 31 October.

The ceremony will begin with Chris Meade leading a panel discussion on “The Future of the Book”. The panel will also include Chris Stevens, Maureen Scott and Neal Hoskins. The inaugural New Media Writing Prize award will be presented after the panel discussion followed by a drinks reception for our winners. The Prize is set to become a major international event on the arts calendar.

‘This award is breaking genuinely new ground in looking at how digital technology is transforming written communication. As the first award of its kind globally it will be a landmark in the increasingly exciting arena of new media writing and I am thrilled to be involved.’ Michael Bhaskar, a member of the judging panel.

The judges of the first  New Media Writing Prize are: Andy Campbell, Michael Bhaskar, Tracey McGarrigan, Jim Pope, Tim Wright.

Gary Dalkin

Press / Media Coordinator – Poole Literary Festival

Now of course there is a regular currency of enhanced ebooks, and not just enhanced ebooks of the content bolted on a la DVD extras model. While this is still the primary offering, it is no longer the only offering. Publishers may move slowly, but they do move. Eventually.

There is a new generation of publisher-produced content that seeks to be fully social, interactive, animated, graphical, new media native and multimedia in a way which no one (ok, publishers) has really done before. Except of course new media writers. Yet there has been no real conversation between the two. Why? It seems like we should have hit the meeting point where there could and should be a productive alliance, when in fact the gulf seems as wide as ever.

On the writing side I often hear that people feel ignored by publishers. Essentially the world of commercial publishing is a closed shop unwilling to listen to the maverick, the outsider and the original, and will ultimately pay for this as audiences gravitate to newer and amorphous forms that exist across the digital media they increasingly engage with at the expense of all others.

There is an element of truth in this. However publishers have to sell books – or something – to keep going. Understandably they are keen not to simply disappear and much new media writing is not designed to be commercial, being associated with a more recondite and experimental mindset. Publishers will always feel constrained by the nature of their audience and the retail opportunities available. This might be an argument for by-passing publishers or intermediaries’ altogether, although history (that most unreliable of guides?) suggests that there will always be a role for the market-making middle man.

What I would like is mediation. It’s time that publishers looked more closely at the field and the way it generates new ideas, interfaces, narrative and informational forms, the way it can unite technical and creative expertise, the way it innovates into whole new product categories. However hopefully also new media writers will look to publishers’ concerns, and constantly ask who is reading this and why, what is the scale and the nature of the audience, how can we package this for wider consumption and what is the business behind it. These grubby financial concerns may be some way removed from the discourse of a critical, digital avant garde but they are the kind of questions without which new media writing will forever marginalise itself.

So, yes, the view from the publisher’s office may have been negative in the past. Publishers are changing fast though. Digital departments are mushrooming and a new appetite is abroad for hitherto unforeseen modes of publishing. With a dialogue from both sides, we could be at the beginning of a new phase not only for publishing, but for writing.

Michael Bhaskar

Digital Publishing Manager at Profile Books

As one of the judges of the New Media Writing Prize I’m interested in discovering the work of individual writers who have boldly carried their ideas into the digital arena and taken advantage of some of the possibilities it offers. The written word can be all too easily duplicated from page to screen with little or no benefit or enhancement; I’m looking for work that includes the physical presence of writing, but which could not possibly exist on paper.

There is a large amount of new media writing experimentation across the internet – the long-established Electronic Literature Directory is a good place to start to see the variety of what’s out there. Or, to see what’s currently in vogue, try The Literary Platform. These are exciting times for writers wanting to experiment with words and technology. However much of the material that has already been produced relies on academic self-reflection, nods to long-dead famous writers, or is so obscure and inaccessible it’s difficult to stay with it for longer than a few minutes.

I’m keen to see something that escapes from these clichés and offers up a work that is truly engaging. Something that makes me sit up and want to read/experience it more – further – rather than meander across the screen for the close button. New media writing is an exciting arena for writers with passion, visionary ideas and the incentive to learn and resource from the internet itself. The possibilities are vast – if not endless. But sometimes having no boundaries isn’t a great thing. A good story – or poem – often has an almost indefinable quality about it that makes it special. New media writing is in some ways still seeking out those indefinable qualities.

Regardless of delivery platform, level of technical accomplishment or choice of subject matter, I’d like to see something that grabs from the outset and delivers a genuinely original and compelling piece of digital writing.

Andy Campbell
www.dreamingmethods.com