Author Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) to Microserialize Major New Work of Fiction via Twitter on Publisher Electric Literature’s Channel @ElectricLit

The first story written expressly for Twitter by a major literary author, “Some Contemporary Characters” will be tweeted over the course of three days on Electric Literature’s Twitter channel, @ElectricLit, beginning Monday, November 30th at 10 am. Utilizing social media, followers of the story will re-tweet it in real-time, a community event that breaks down the conventional barrier between reader and publisher.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) November 23, 2009

Electric Literature will begin a new venture in microserialization™ by tweeting Rick Moody’s new story, “Some Contemporary Characters”, from Monday, November 30th to Wednesday, December 2nd.

Moody’s story is broken into 153 bursts of 140 characters or less, each clearly labored over with a precision and lyricism that reveals the surprising literary potential of the tweet. “It really was like writing Haiku,” says Moody, who went head-to-head with the character limitation of Twitter and used it as a source of inspiration. “Moody has taken something that could be seen as gimmicky - 'Twitter-fiction' - and created something transcendent,” said Electric Literature’s Editor, Scott Lindenbaum.

Participatory ePublishing
An experiment in social media and ePublishing, followers of the story are encouraged to re-tweet it in real-time, a community process wherein anyone can be a co-publisher.

Making Literature Tweetable
The story will be published one tweet at a time, in brief intervals, over the course of 3 days, beginning at 10am on Monday, November 30th. “Publishing to Twitter has some unique challenges,” says editor Scott Lindenbaum. “With thousands of tweets flying per second, and users logging on at unpredictable hours, it is impossible to capture a reader’s uninterrupted attention. Rather than try, we are publishing in short intervals over a three-day period to ensure the maximum number of followers are exposed to the story. Rick has composed it so each tweet is strong enough to stand on its own.”

Electric Literature's Twitter Channel is http://twitter.com/ElectricLit

Rick Moody and the editors of Electric Literature are available for interviews.

Contact:
Andy Hunter
Editor in Chief, Electric Literature
323-839-6204
http://www.electricliterature.com

Rick Moody is a celebrated American writer. His work includes four novels: Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, and The Diviners, as well as three collections of short fiction, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, Demonology, and Right Livelihoods. His first novel Garden State (1992) won the Pushcart Editor's Choice Award. His memoir The Black Veil (2002) won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. He has also received the Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His 1994 bestseller, The Ice Storm, was made into a feature film by Director Ang Lee.

Electric Literature’s mission is to use new media and innovative distribution to keep literature vital in the digital age. Their critically acclaimed short story anthology series has received widespread attention for its eBook/iPhone/POD publishing model and inventive cross-genre collaborations.

Microserialization™ is the return of serialized storytelling, adapted for new media such as Twitter and cellular phones.

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