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Deena Larsen (born 1964) is a new media, hypertext author, known for ground-breaking work in creating structural patterns in hypermedia literature.

Biography

Deena Larsen received her BA in English/Philosophy from the University of Northern Colorado in 1986. Her undergraduate thesis, "Nansense Ya Snorsted: A logical look at nonsense" received the university's 1986 Best Thesis Award. After spending time in San Francisco and Japan, she returned to Colorado and earned her MA in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1991. She currently works at the Bureau of Reclamation, where she developed and wrote the Decision Process Guidebook: How to Succeed in Government.

She has led many writers workshops (online, at conferences, and at universities) to encourage exploration into the possibilities of hypertext. She also hosted the Electronic Literature Organization chats from 2000-2005. She taught at Red Rocks Community College, Lakewood, Colorado.

Works

Deena Larsen's first work, Marble Springs,Eastgate Systems, 1993 was one of the first interactive hypertext poetry collections. The work explored the lives of women in a Colorado mountain town between 1853 and 1935 in the tradition of The Spoon River Anthology and Winesburg Ohio. Written in Hypercard, Marble Springs presaged web navigational structures and icons. It provides margins for notes, biographical notations, and blank "pages" for readers to add their own characters into the town.

Her second work, Samplers, Eastgate Systems, 1997, is a series of short stories done in Storyspace, and showcased the unique capabilities of Storyspace. For example, Storyspace allows links to have names, and Larsen used this capability to comment on, and undercut, the story. (See Mark Bernstein's Storyspace one article)

Her many subsequent works focus on and exemplify different aspects of potential narrative and navigational structures in hypermedia. List includes:

• Datafeeds, Visionary Landscapes, 2008. A piece showing the same incident in three universes with differing levels of blindness, sightedness, and feeling heartbeats.
• Shandean Ambles, Drunken boat, Fall, 2004 A romp through the Tristam Shandy Hall.
• I'm Simply Saying, Inflect 2004 A performance piece showing motions and links under text.
• Cut to the Flesh and Going through the Signs with Jody Zellen for page space Feb 2004 Flash pieces with animated navigation.
• The Princess Murderer with geniwate at the Iowa Review Web July 2003 A "game" readers play by determining which navigational menus to follow.
• Tree Woman, in Epimone 2003 (Click on English, pieces...) A flash work based on imagery
• Firefly, Poems that Go, 2002 A flash work consisting of 6 stanzas, each of which have 5 lines. Each line has 6 possibilities.
• Peace Roses, in The Muse Apprentice Guild, 2002 A flash work showing a poem in three parts with music.
• Dreams of Cobras, in Tattoo Highway, 2002 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Intruder, in New River, 2001 A flash work exploring hidden and secret places over a hummingbird's nest.
• Carving in Possibilities, frAme6, 2001 A flashwork that sculpts Michaelangelo's David in words.
• E:Electron with Geoffrey Gatza at the Blue Moon Review, 2001 A love story using the periodic table of elements as its basic valance structure.
• The Pines at Walden Pond, in Cauldron and Net, Volume III, 2001 (under confluence) A Trellix work showing branched hypertext navigation.
• Children's Time, in Snakeskin, 2001 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Sea Whispers, an accessible version in Currents, 2001 A javascript "microhypertext"
• In the Sun, Project Hope, 2001 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Disappearing Rain, 2000 A large mystery novel using a series of embedded poems as the title of nodes, exploring Anna's disappearance with an open internet connection as the only clue.
• Bubbles, in Electronic Poetry Center, 2000 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Ghost Moons, part of Akenatondocks published cd, 2000 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Power Moves, in Cauldron and Net, 2000 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Breathing at the Galaxy's Edges, in Planet Magazine, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Mountain Rumbles, in New River, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"
• The Language of the Void, in Riding the Meridian, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Spiritual Comfort, in PIF, 1999A javascript "microhypertext"
• Dream Merging, in Aileron, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Sand Loves, in Eastgate's Reading Room, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"
• Ferris Wheels, in the Iowa Review Web, 1999 An early html piece detailing the possible suicide and probable marraige during a Ferris Wheel ride
• Stained Word Windows, in Word Circuits Gallery, 1999 A javascript "microhypertext"

Her textbook, Fundamentals, details the basic rhetorical moves possible in Hypermedia.

References

Bolter, J.D., 2001. Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print By J. David Bolter. Routledge, 2001.

Funkhouser, C., 2008. Prehistoric digital poetry: an archaeology of forms, 1959-1995. University of Alabama Press, 2007.

Müller-Zettelmann, E. and M. Rubik., 2005. Theory into poetry: new approaches to the lyric. Rodopi, 2005.

Smith, H., 2005. The writing experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing. Allen & Unwin, 2005.

External links

• Larsen's home page
• Eastgate Systems author