Das 4. Internationale Literaturfestival Berlin (21.9. bis 2.10.2004) stellt 100 eingeladene Autoren mit Foto, Biographie in deutscher und englischer Sprache sowie einer Auswahl ihrer wichtigsten Publikationen vor. Aufgrund der großen Resonanz wird der Katalog in ähnlicher Konzeption, wie 2003 erscheinen. Jeder Autor wurde gebeten, eine individuelle Antwort zum Motto "Make answer, Muse!" zu senden. Ihre spontanen Reaktionen - ob Foto, Collage, Gedicht oder object trouvé - wurden gestalterisch integriert. Was tun die Dichter, wenn die Musen schweigen, die Inspiration versagt, die Feder bockt, die Tinte stockt? Selbst Shakespeare litt unter dem "Schreibblock", wie seine ungeduldige Anrufung der Musen zeigt: "Wie, Muse, willst du deine Säumnis sühnen? Du schweigst, wo Wahrheit trägt der Schönheit Kleid, Die engverbunden dem Geliebten dienen, Und so tust du und bist dadurch geweiht. Antworte, Muse! Sagst du mir wohl gar, Wahrheit erstrahle schön auch ohne dich, Und ohne Kunst sei echte Schönheit wahr, Das Beste sei das Beste stets an sich? Er braucht dich nicht! Deshalb willst du nicht singen? Das ist kein Grund! Denn ist es nicht dein Amt, Ihm übers goldne Grab noch Ruhm zu bringen, Daß hell sein Lob in fernster Zukunft flammt? Tu deinen Dienst! Ich lehre dich die Art, Daß ihn, gleich uns, die spätste Zeit gewahrt."

Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.

How has the Internet changed literary culture? 2nd Place, N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature by The Electronic Literature Organization Reports of the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Books are flourishing in the Internet era—widely discussed and reviewed in online readers’ forums and publicized through book trailers and author blog tours. But over the past twenty-five years, digital media platforms have undeniably transformed book culture. Since Amazon’s founding in 1994, the whole way in which books are created, marketed, publicized, sold, reviewed, showcased, consumed, and commented upon has changed dramatically. The digital literary sphere is no mere appendage to the world of print—it is where literary reputations are made, movements are born, and readers passionately engage with their favorite works and authors. In The Digital Literary Sphere, Simone Murray considers the contemporary book world from multiple viewpoints. By examining reader engagement with the online personas of Margaret Atwood, John Green, Gary Shteyngart, David Foster Wallace, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and even Jonathan Franzen, among others, Murray reveals the dynamic interrelationship of print and digital technologies. Drawing on approaches from literary studies, media and cultural studies, book history, cultural policy, and the digital humanities, this book asks: What is the significance of authors communicating directly to readers via social media? How does digital media reframe the “live” author-reader encounter? And does the growing army of reader-reviewers signal an overdue democratizing of literary culture or the atomizing of cultural authority? In exploring these questions, The Digital Literary Sphere takes stock of epochal changes in the book industry while probing books’ and digital media’s complex contemporary coexistence.

This book is in part an anthology of the best of accounts of the World Writers Conference and also an overview of the lively wide-ranging global debate that the authors' views engendered among the many writers who took part.