Computational Writing 2026

Dr. Nick Montfort’s work includes ten computer-generated books (in print from seven presses), the collaborations The Deletionist and Sea and Spar Between, and more than fifty individual digital projects. His latest poetry book, All the Way for the Win, is composed entirely of three-letter words. His MIT Press books include The Future and two co-edited volumes, The New Media Reader and Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023. He’s a professor at MIT, principal investigator in the University of Bergen’s Center for Digital Narrative, and directs a lab/studio, The Trope Tank. He lives in New York City.

Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their most recent full length poetry book, Negative Money, was published in 2023. Their chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland and are a 2024 Foundation for Contemporary Arts poetry grant recipient and 2024 Deutsch Foundation Ruby’s Grant recipient. They are co-editor with Nick Montfort of the recently released anthology Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023.

Kalen Iwamoto is a conceptual artist and writer whose practice explores the shifting boundaries of language, art, and technology. A pioneer in blockchain poetics, she is the co-founder of the digital poetry gallery and collective, theVERSEverse. In 2022, she joined forces with her partner Julien Silvano to create Wen New, an art, language and technology atelier that explores the liminal spaces between genres, media, and disciplines. The duo has created book-objects, paintings based on procedural writing, and literary machines and poetic devices, like the Couple Machine and Miniscriber, a conceptual poetry synth. Rooted in conceptual writing, Oulipo, and digital poetics, Kalen’s work often engages critically and playfully with emerging technologies, offering new ways of relating to language through both digital and physical forms. Her pieces have been exhibited internationally, including in Paris, New York, Budapest, Berlin, Tokyo, and beyond. Born in Canada, of Japanese heritage, and based in France, her practice is shaped by experiences of cultural and linguistic in-betweenness.

Dr. Daniel Scott Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA, where he serves as faculty for the Digital Humanities, the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, and the UCLA Game Lab. His online editorial work can be found on PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. His books include Elden Poem (Hysterically Real, 2022), Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal (with James Hoff; Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. His most recent book, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), examines the networked afterlives of media-reflexive works of art and letters.