This is the home of if:book UK, the charitable company exploring the future of the book, founded by writer Chris Meade in 2007.
IF:BOOK UK gives the annual if:book UK New Media Writing Prize organised by Bournemouth University, and in 2015 launched The Dot Award for Digital Literature, given to a writer for a proposed new work using the web in creative and collaborative ways.
In January 2018 the if:book New Media Writing Prize was awarded to The Cartographer’s Confession by James Attlee.
The Dot Award was won by Lou Sarabadzic , French poet, novelist and blogger living in the UK. She writes:
“Since 1960s, literary criticism has discussed in great depth the role of the reader in the creation of texts and stories. 21st Century technologies made this role even more visible. #NERDS [Never Ending Retelling through Digital Stories] is a project that celebrates and investigates the infinite interactive territories offered by recent developments.
We all have representations coming to mind when thinking about a given story – be it a book, a legend or a TV show. For instance, if someone tells you: ‘Les Misérables’, ‘Catch 22’, or ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, regardless of whether or not you’ve read/seen/understood said work – images will immediately spring to mind. These images contribute to, and form part of, the collective imagination.
My idea is to set up and manage different social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) to invite everyone to contribute to the development of one big collective brain (= a website) holding all of these images to encourage new transmission and storytelling practices.”
The DOT AWARD is for a proposal and we don’t publish a shortlist as we don’t want to spill the beans about ideas that haven’t yet been realised. However, you can see all the other New Media Writing Prize shortlisted works on www.newmediawriting.co.uk.
The 2nd Dot Award was won by Greek poet Theodoros Chiotis for a proposal to make a multi-media performance in real time mixing autobiographical journal with machine-created data. He was beamed in by Skype to the Bournemouth event to talk about a year of data gathering and poetry writing.
IF:BOOK UK is a think and do tank, linked to Bob Stein’s Institute for The Future of the Book in New York. We’ve been at the forefront of debate about the future of the book at a time of huge changes in publishing and digital culture. Follow us on Twitter @ifbook and on Facebook
NEARLYOLOGY.NET is the home of the Nearly Project and WHAT DIDN’T QUITE, a transmedia fiction being created by Chris Ifso, with songs by THE IFSO BAND
THE IFSO PRESS is our changing online menu of great reading commissioned or recommended by if:book. Authors we’ve worked with include Naomi Alderman, Cory Doctorow, Daljit Nagra, Kate Pullinger, Saradha Soobrayen.. and many more.