Poetry & Prose:
Eric Anderson
Hadara Bar-Nadav
Denise Bergman
Thea Brown
Jennifer Chapis
Suzanne Cleary
Elizabeth Cross
Jesse DeLong
Dan George
AB Gorham
Richard Greenfield
Derek Gromadzki
Kathleen Hellen
Russell Jaffe
Christopher Kondrich
Brandon Krieg
Jason Labbe
Megan Levad
rob mclennan
B.Z. Niditch
Simon Perchik
Marthe Reed
John Phillip Santos
Anne Shaw
Kent Shaw
Carmen Giménez Smith
Jason Snyder
D.E. Steward
Josh Wardrip
Nicholas YB Wong
Amy Wright

The book is a miraculous, marvelously tactile and democratic invention, one that made literatures of all sorts more affordable, accessible, and transportable, and that lead to increased literacy around the world. As publishers and writers and book artists ourselves, we have largely dedicated our lives to books and what goes in them. Books are among our favorite objects, and recently, their fate has inspired discussions, predictions, and heated debate. The ability to carry whole libraries in a single handheld device is a Borgesian dream come true, but one can imagine the consequences. Will technology increase access to literature or restrict it to those who can afford new technologies? Will paper bound books become art objects for antiquarians, restricted to museums and wealthy collectors? Will producing electronic media prove more or less
hazardous to the environment as compared with paper production for printed books?

Between these covers, bound by glue, we offer a number of meditations, discussions, predictions and anxieties about the future of the book. Our feature artist, Brian Dettmer, is a book artist in the most literal sense as he sculpts and reforms printed books. Joan Retallack explores the future of the book in her opening essay, and Ander Monson delves into the digital transformation of text. With the future of the book changing before our eyes, the whole concept of future is under scrutiny. The collaborative work, "Story Net," first performed at the &NOW conference in San Diego last year, examines the concept of "tomorrow" through a kaleidoscope of approaches, ranging from the historical and sociological to the theoretical and narratological, including government examinations of narrative and "story" for defense purposes. Many of the works published throughout this issue express digital anxieties about the world-altering advent of our computer age, and notably, many of the contributors are themselves editors and former editors, book artists, publishers of paper and online journals, chapbooks, and websites.

—Catherine Kasper and David Ray Vance