Creative writing and new media

Writing has always involved forms of technology, whether the pen, the typewriter or the computer. But the growth of new media technologies is offering many exciting possibilities for experimentation and innovation in creative writing. In new media writing- or networked and programmable writing, eliterature or digital writing as it is variously called - the screen replaces the page. In such writing environments we can make words kinetic, pursue new forms of interactivity and link disparate web pages. We can also interweave text, sound and image, and create environments in which readers/viewers transform texts through their bodily movements. Most radically, we can program the computer to compose fiction or poetry, thereby shifting our conception of authorship. Consequently, new media writing is a very diverse and challenging field which stretches from animated poetry and interactive fiction to computer-generated text and computer-interactive installations.