Interview with Dene Grigar

Abstract

Dene Grigar is Professor and Director of The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver whose research focuses on the creation, curation, preservation, and criticism of Electronic Literature, specifically building multimedial environments and experiences for live performance, installations, and curated spaces; desktop computers; and mobile media devices. She has authored 14 media works such as "Curlew" (2014), "A Villager's Tale" (2011), the "24-Hour Micro E-Lit Project" (2009), "When Ghosts Will Die" (2008), and "Fallow Field: A Story in Two Parts" (2005), as well as 56 scholarly articles and three books. She also curates exhibits of electronic literature and media art, mounting shows at the British Computer Society and the Library of Congress and for the Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA), among other venues. With Stuart Moulthrop (U of Wisconsin Milwaukee) she developed the methodology for documenting born digital media, a project that culminated in an open-source, multimedia book, entitled "Pathfinders" (2015), and book of media art criticism, entitled "Traversals" (2017), for The MIT Press. She is President of the Electronic Literature Organization, Associate Editor of "Leonardo Reviews," and "Literary Studies in the Digital Age (LSDA)," and a series editor for "Electronic Literature," with Bloomsbury Press. In 2017 she was awarded the Lewis E. and Stella G. Buchanan Distinguished Professorship by her university. She also directs the Electronic Literature Lab at WSUV. In her spare time she runs, collects wine, does yoga, and misses the Gulf Coast.