Hey now–time to get your proposals together.  This one’s going to be big…

The &Now Festival is a biennial festival, celebration, and conference that explores intersections between creative and critical praxis, examines innovative and experimental acts of writing, and advances a serious inquiry into theories of language and consciousness.  The 2011 &Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever! will be held October 13-15, 2011 at University of California, San Diego,  a research institution internationally renowned for imaginative experimentation in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

The event will feature creative and critical panels on contemporary literary art, plus cross-disciplinary performances, keynote presentations, the Tomorrowland Forever Book Fair for the sale of books and other literary objects/experiences, the “Innovation in a Box” performance booth, and a gallery show.

&Now’s 2011 theme “Tomorrowland Forever!” addresses the idea of “innovative” literary art and how that term is linked to ideas about progress and the future. Questions concerning the institutionalization of innovation, especially in the literary arts, are meant to invigorate the inquiry in productive ways that also engage such rhetoric used in humanities disciplines such as religion, education, and law along with nanotechnology, neuroscience, and other sciences.

&Now has produced four previous festival-conferences from 2004 – 2009. &NOW Books, based at Lake Forest College, produces the biennial anthology, The &Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, with its next publication in 2012. &NOW Books also publishes the first book by the winners of The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Award, which comes with $10,000 and suite-of-one’s-own for a two-month period. &NOW Books are distributed by Northwestern University Press.

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PLEASE SUBMIT Proposals for critical papers, criti-fictional presentations, fiction and poetry readings, staged play readings, rituals, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects, and intergenre literary work of all kinds. We particularly encourage pieces that promote linguistic and genre transgressions, along with works that promote interdisciplinary explorations and conversations with past, present, or future literary concerns and movements.  We also encourage proposals for the “Innovation in a Box” Performance Booth (see below).

Further, we strongly encourage groups and individuals from populations normally underrepresented at innovative, avant-garde, and experimental literary arts gatherings. Proposals can be for individual readings, critical panels, creative panels, and/or roundtable discussions. There is a possibility that we may be able to offer some panels in Spanish with interpreters, depending on the number of submissions for Spanish language events.

Individuals are limited to being a part of TWO separate proposals (panel and/or individual submission), and no individual will participate in more than two panel events, one critical and one creative. Yes, the lines between these may be blurred.  Additionally, anyone may apply to perform for “Innovation in a Box” (see below).

If submitting a group proposal, only one member of the group (the curator/moderator) should submit, but they should include panelist names, plans, and biographical information for all panelists, as detailed below. You can find a the schedule for the 2009 panels and readings here.

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Please submit proposals by April 12 in the following format:

*Your name and institutional affiliation, if any
*Contact info for all members of your panel, if this is a group proposal
*Title of Proposed Reading/Performance/Presentation
* Names of other participants – Please be sure all participants are confirmed before including them in this proposal
*Brief Description (no more than 500 words, including why this presentation would be good for the 2011 &Now Festival of New Writing; Tomorrowland Forever! and, if relevant, very brief description of all panelists’ anticipated contribution)
*2-3 Images, if you have them
*Brief Bio (a few sentences/no more than 150 words) of all participants
*Anticipate tech, room, or other performance and accessibility needs (if any). Be as specific as possible. Please indicate which of these items you can furnish, and which ones you need &Now to provide.

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“Innovation in a Box” Performance Booth Proposals

Individual writers may perform their writing for a very small audience and video camera for two minutes in a confessional-style or peep-show style booth with glass or one-way mirror separating writer from audience and video camera.  Videos will be downloaded directly to a video website and projected throughout the festival before its panels. Please submit the 2-minute draft text of the work you would like to perform, plus anything you’d like us to know about the nature of the performance. Participants will receive an official acceptance of their proposal, which will help anyone affiliated with universities or businesses with funding guidelines to access travel or conference funds.

Anyone can submit a proposal. You need not be associated with an academic or any other institution.

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Submit all proposals HERE using our online submission process.

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PROPOSAL DEADLINE: April 12, 2011

Please note: Each session will be approximately 75 minutes. Individual presentations should therefore be limited to 15-20 minutes so that grouped sessions that make thematic/aesthetic sense can be arranged and so there is time for questions and discussion.  Please also consider creating new kinds of presentations that are unlike conventional panels or readings and that expand notions of what these types of theatrical-pedagogical encounters might look like.

Send questions, comments concerns to: andnow2011@gmail.com