Communications Podcast Archive 2009

‘Remix My Lit’: Towards an Open-Access Literary Culture

The publishing buzzword of recent times has undoubtedly been ‘open access’. But typically this has referred to scientific journal publishing, only recently expanding to include humanities research. This paper goes further in asking what might an open-access literary culture look like? Developments around online publishing, electronic-books, print-on-demand and digital libraries see publishers facing challenges on every side. How might publishers’ traditional role as gatekeepers of literary culture be similarly usurped in an environment characterised by networked books, wiki-novels and fictional ‘rip and burn’ practices? Outlining three exciting recent experiments in open-access literature, Simone Murray’s illustrated talk investigates what the digital future of literature might look like, and what its impact will be on writers, publishers and readers.

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