Call for Submissions
Electronic Literature Collection Volume 5
Accepting submissions: October 13, 2025 - January 6, 2026
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.
ELC collections appear approximately five years apart, a period that reveals how technocultural changes emerge, consolidate, and perish. In the last five years, however, we have observed a deeper enmeshing of culture, technology, capital, and political influence. While we, the ELC Editorial Collective, remain welcoming to a plurality of e-lit approaches, this landscape prompts us to specifically seek works that privilege critical, intentional, and reflexive engagements with the media and the technocultural landscapes that produce them; privilege the pedagogies facilitated by e-lit; respond to or reflect upon contemporary, pressing digital culture issues such as privacy, surveillance, data, environmental effects, digital rights, (dis)information, and access; and, ultimately, works that tie e-lit to other realms and concerns of cultural production.
We consider eligible literary works as any work that is fundamentally shaped by its digital nature, whether they exist purely on screens, in hybrid formats, in print, or in physical spaces. Similarly, we want to highlight diversity of form and authorship. This includes, but is not limited to: Twine works, bots, locative projects, narratives that take place via email or social media, book apps, sound/visual/AR poetry, zines, games, computer-generated literature, fanfiction works, and others. Examples of the range of writing previously collected in Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are available at http://collection.eliterature.org.
Following past volumes, we are committed to preservation and documentation, with a focus on innovative work that challenges literary norms. The ELC5 Editorial Collective seeks diversity of form, language, identity, and culture. Therefore, entries in any language are welcome.The editors particularly welcome work from:
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Artists who have not yet been published in an Electronic Literature Collection.
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Artists working in communities where e-lit is nascent, and/or e-lit representing cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, Indigenous First Peoples, and nations and islands in Asia.
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Students and artists who produced work in class or on their own.
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Other groups, collectives, or labs invested in all forms of digital writing and electronic literature.
Since the last ELC volume, much attention has been given to Generative AI and the blockchain. We welcome works that use such technologies in order to defamiliarize hegemonic AI models and crypto platforms through critical and creative engagement. Works using such technologies should prioritize transparency, deliberation, and accountability in terms of specific datasets, models, and environmental impacts whenever possible and relevant. Authorial statements should be explicit in acknowledging their use and the work’s aesthetic rationales.
Regarding Documentation and Traversals of Obsolete or Inaccessible Works
We are interested in including documentation of works that due to obsolescence, platform sunsetting, site specificity, self-destruction, or other factors have become or may soon be inaccessible. If a work is location specific; built for or designed for a platform that is no longer supported; or designed in such a way to be temporary or self-destructive in nature, we welcome submissions of Traversals – video and audio recordings of a digital text showing its possibilities, capabilities, and functionality. Our recommendation is to record the work in a resolution of at least 720p (1280x720) and not to exceed 5 GB in submission size as a single video file.
For works where a Traversal, performance, or demonstration does not make sense, we ask for documentation of the core features, aesthetics, and essence of the work and its contributions. For an XR work, this could include a recording of a session with representative elements or core aspects of the work and not simply function as a trailer for the work.
How to Submit
Please submit entries using this form.
Please submit the following:
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Work (if less than 1 GB total as a ZIP) or link to the work hosted on a platform like Itch.io, web hosting, or file hosting service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
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Initial metadata of author(s), work title, work description, and work accessibility options.
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(Optional.) Recording of a Traversal or documentation demonstrating core features, aesthetics and essence if the work cannot be accessed, played, or interacted with easily.
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A brief artist/author statement, including any relevant content warnings (~200 words).
Deadline: January 6, 2026
The ELC5 Editorial Collective
- Dan Cox
- Élika Ortega
- Dani Spinosa
- Zach Whalen
Questions?
Email: elcvol5@gmail.com