Robert Coover. "Literary Hypertext: The Passing of the Golden Age"

Robert Coover is the author of nearly twenty books of innovative fiction, including Pricksongs & Descants (1969), The Public Burning (1977, nominated for a National Book Award), Pinocchio in Venice (1991), Briar Rose (1996), and most recently, Ghost Town: A Novel (1998). His plays, short fiction, and poetry have been widely published and collected. His awards and honors include a William Faulkner Award for Best First Novel, three Obie Awards, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of numerous literary reviews and essays, including the classic 1992 and 1993 New York Times Magazine essays on hypertext fiction, "The End of Books" and "Hyperfiction: Novels for the Computer." For the past decade, he been teaching experimental courses in hypertext and multimedia narrative at Brown University.

Elliott Peter Earls. "Eye Sling Shot Lions"

Elliott Peter Earls was awarded an "Emerging Artist" grant from the Wooster Group in New York City. He was a featured performer at the Wooster Group's "Performing Garage" from July 5th through 12th, 1999. As a performance artist, musician and designer, Elliott Peter Earls recently completed six months of performances at "HERE" in New York City. On October 8th 1998, he continued his solo performances of "Excerpts from Eye Sling Shot Lions" with an appearance at

Image copyright (c)1999 John Heaton-Jones, Brian Schorn, and Elliott Earls.

"Living Surfaces" in Park City, Utah. He performed in December at "Opera Totale" in Mestre/Venice, and in a private performance at "Fabrica," Bennetton's research center in Troviso. He was also a featured performer during the "1999 Culture Mart Festival" in SOHO. On May 16th, 1999 Earl's type designs are distributed worldwide by Emigre, Inc. His posters, "The Conversion of Saint Paul," and "Throwing Apples at the Sun," were recently added to the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Earl's latest enhanced CD/poster package was recently added to the Cooper Hewitt's research file, while his poster "The Temptation of Saint Wolfgang, She a Capulet..." was also added to the permanent collection. Earl's commercial work includes: two recent TV commercials for The Cartoon Network in the United Kingdom, and an interactive documentary on the work of Frank Gehry for Casabella in Italy. He received his M.F.A from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

N. Katherine Hayles. "Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: Rethinking Signification in New Media"

N. Katherine Hayles writes and teaches on the relations between literature and science in the twentieth century (soon to include the twenty-first century). She is currently at work on two books about electronic literature. The first, entitled Linking Bodies: Hypertext Fiction in Print and New Media, explores hypertext as a literary form and discusses its implications for the media-specific practices of print and computer technology. The second, Coding the Signifier, argues that current models of signification have embedded into their theoretical frameworks presuppositions that are actually about signifiers as they appear on the printed page rather than signifiers in general. Based on several case studies, this book offers new ways for thinking about signification in electronic environments.

Her other books include How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999), Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science (1991), and Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990). Hayles has won numerous awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Rockefeller Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, Italy. She has been awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the University of Rochester, the Medal of Honor from the University of Helsinki, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and has won two Distinguished Teaching Awards at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she is a Professor of English.

Michael Joyce. "Present, tense, ordinary, fiction comma dot calm"

Michael Joyce is the author of afternoon, a story (1987), perhaps the mostcelebrated hypertext fiction written to date, and of Twelve Blue (1996) and Twilight, A Symphony (1997). His shorter hyperfictions include "WOE" (1991), "Lucy's Sister: A Guide to the Internet" (1994), and, most recently, "On the birthday of the stranger..." (1999), published on the WWW by the Evergreen Review. His linear novel, Going the Distance (1995), has been published on the WWW by Pilgrim Press. Joyce's new collection of essays, Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture, will be published by the University of Michigan Press, which also published his collection of essays on hypertext theory and pedagogy, Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (1995). He is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Electronic Learning and Teaching at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.