The 2019 Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

“The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with the following: a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online resources about the awardee’s achievements; a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement; and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Artist or Scholar selected for this award should demonstrate excellence in four or more of the following categories:

– Creation of opportunities for younger scholars
– Publication of influential academic studies of electronic literature
– Practice-based artistic research in the field, with significant presentations and exhibitions of creative work
– Curatorial activities, particularly including editing and the organization of exhibitions, conferences, workshops, roundtables and research groups
– Preservationist work, whether individual or institutional
– Active participation in conferences and exhibitions, both national and international
– Contribution to ELO as an organization, whether as a member of the Board of Directors or Literary Art Board or as informal advisor.

We are delighted to announce this year’s winner of the Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award, Australia-based Mez Breeze.

Mez Breeze, who has been working in electronic literature for decades, is known for “net.art, working primarily with code poetry, electronic literature, mezangelle, and digital games.” Mezangelle is a unique language that blends code and text in what previous winner, N. Katherine Hayles, classifies as a computer-age creole. Mez’s more recent work has led to her collaboration on an episode of “Inanimate Alice” as well as other explorations in Virtual Reality.

As previous winners have done, Mez will be passing the monetary award to a scholar who will be working on the artist’s oeuvre.

Scholar Beneficiary Kate Gwynne is a creative practice PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her current research explores character embodiment in Virtual Reality (VR) narratives, specifically works which allow for the self to be experienced as another, and how this transformation is achieved through the embodied possibilities inherent to VR. She holds a masters in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and has written for the Guardian and The Conversation.

This year’s three committees were chaired by past-ELO President Joseph Tabbi, who was last year’s Hayles recipient.”