Hi all,

I’m excited for what will be my first THATCamp, and regret the tardiness of this post. It sounds like I’m greener to these topics than most of you, and I’m looking forward to learning a great deal. I’m a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago (hello, fellow UIC-ers!) — in the Program for Writers (part of the English department). I teach a composition course on the social impact of technology and am eager to learn about new ways of incorporating technology into my curriculum and assignments. I also teach an intro fiction writing course and require my students to produce an online collaborative fiction project — an assignment I’d like to revamp given all the different kinds of narrative forms available online. So – I’m interested in digital pedagogy and collaborative learning/writing, esp through the use of online media forms.

I’m also interested in gaming theory and interactive narrative-  coming at it from the perspective of an experimental writer who has only made a few stabs at getting off the page. I have written some stories that play around with appropriating video game causality, am very much interested in how the kind of causal/contingent systems set up in games can inform fiction — but I’m by no means a gamer and admit to being something of a tourist in this realm.

All to say, I imagine I’m behind the curve on a lot of this stuff, and will do my best to keep up. See you on Saturday.