&NOW Festival

&Now is traveling biennial literary festival and a publishing organization, both focused on innovative literature. The festival’s main emphasis is on work that blends or crosses genres and includes a wide variety of work, such as multimedia projects, performance pieces, criti-fictional presentations, and otherwise. The festival seeks out "literary art as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as a process that is aware of its own literary and extra-literary history, that is as much about its form and materials, language, communities, and practice as it is about its subject matter." Most of the work presented by authors is considered experimental literature.

Most of the presentations are readings and panels focused on literature. The main population in attendance is made up of writers, performers and intermedia artists, alongside undergraduate and graduate student writers and scholars doing research on contemporary literatures. Most participants visit from the US, Mexico, and Northern Europe.

Members of the Executive Board are currently Dimitri Anastasopoulos, Sylvie Bauer, Amina Cain, Antoine Cazé, Jeffrey DeShell, Rebecca Goodman, Christina Milletti, Martin Nakell, Davis Schneiderman Co-Director: &Now Books, Elisabeth Sheffield, Anna Joy Springer, Anne-Laure Tissut, and Steve Tomasula, Conference Founder.

The &Now Conference of Innovative Writing & the Literary Arts was founded in 2004 at the University of Notre Dame by Steve Tomasula, and featured keynote speakers Stephanie Strickland, Lydia Davis, Stacey Levine, Joe Amato (poet), and Debra Di Blasi.

In April, 2006, Lake Forest College hosted the &Now Festival. The leading keynote speaker was William H. Gass.

In April, 2008, the festival was held at Chapman University. The featured speakers at this festival included Steve Katz, Stacey Levine, Wendy Walker, Tom Lafarge, Ishmael Reed, FC2 Flash Reading, Steve Tomasula, and David Antin.

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