Between a Printed Codex and a Novel on a Mobile Screen. Kate Pullinger and Agnieszka Przybyszewska in Conversation about Conjuring Words, Multimedia and Readers’ Bodies in e-Literary Stories

Abstract

The interview is largely focused on the inter-, multi- and transmediality of Kate Pullinger’s digital work. It summarises the author’s experience of creating electronic literature over a period of almost twenty years (excluding projects aimed at children). The conversation depicts a panorama of the artist’s digital work, ranging from her first experiments with media to her most recent projects. The interview highlights the pioneering nature of some of Pullinger’s projects and points out the various links between them. Above all it introduces readers to the extremely varied world of Pullinger’s e-literary texts, also familiarising the audience with some of her works that are no longer available. It is also an opportunity to ask questions about the similarities and differences in creating literary work as a classic printed story and as a multimodal, often interactive or variant electronic text that is not indifferent to the reader’s responses. Other issues raised in the interview are: involving the reader’s body and physiology into the act of reading, the problem of authorship of community digital projects, and the challenges faced by e-writers in the past and nowadays.