Late in March, I was surfing around the Nordic Council’s funding info when I noticed that Nordbok funds projects to further literatury projects in collaboration between the Nordic countries – and the deadline was the next day. Figuring I might as well have a go, I emailed electronic literature buddies in Denmark, Sweden and Finland and fired by their enthusiasm (“Great idea! We’re in!”) and assistence from both collaborators and colleagues, managed to write a grant application in time for the deadline. To my surprise, I discovered I really enjoyed it!

When I returned from my travels, there was a letter from Nordbok in my office inbox. Nordbok has decided to fund your project ELINOR – Elektronic litteratur i Norden / Electronic Literature in the Nordic countries with NOK 140 000. That’s about US$ 20,000, which is a wonderful start for a network to promote and encourage electronic literature in a region that has technology and literature but has not yet combined the two to a great extent.

What we’ll be doing? A website, of course, to showcase electronic literature created in the Nordic region. We also applied for money for two conferences or symposiums, a series of author tours and to write and distribute a leaflet about electronic literature for libraries across the region. We’ll have to see what we’re able to do on smaller budget but I’m hopeful that this initial funding will make it a lot easier for people to find other sources of financing for projects along the way. This funding is for promotion of literature, but I’d also like to connect it to research funding at some point. First, though, I want to help make electronic literature visible enough that at least the reading public realises that it exists!

My partners in starting up this endeavour are Raine Koskimaa in Finland, Patrik Svensson of HUMlab in Sweden, and from Denmark we have Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca in Copenhagen and S??ren Pold in Aarhus, and Thomas Brevik is our brilliant technolibrarian expert. We’ll be finding other people in our respective countries, and we’re also working with the well-established international Electronic Literature Organisation.

If you’d like to be involved, or know someone who should be involved, get in touch with me (jill dot walker at uib dot no) or with an ELINOR person in your own country – we’ll set the website up soon to make that easier.