Anastasia Salter

Biography

Anastasia Salter, Ph.D., is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida focused on electronic literature, a field that explores the future of storytelling through both practice and theory across emerging platforms ranging from generative AI to electronic poetry to video games. Dr. Salter serves at the Vice President of the Electronic Literature Organization, an international research and creative community dedicated to this exploration.

Dr. Salter is the author of several books exploring the history, present, and future of technology’s influence on our narratives and culture. Two of Dr. Salter’s books focus on technologies that have reshaped what is possible on the Internet—Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT Press, with John Murray, 2014) documents one of the most important early tools for web animations and games, and Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives (Amherst College, with Stuart Moulthrop, 2021) considers a tool reshaping personal interactive storytelling. Several of Dr. Salter’s books consider the genre of adventure games and the role of game designers in shaping the literary and personal potential of games as an art form: Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider (Bloomsbury, with Aaron Reed and John Murray, 2020); Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, Hidden Objects (Bloomsbury, 2017), and What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (University of Iowa Press, 2014).

Dr. Salter’s books on digital culture also address some of the challenges of harassment, trolling, and marginalization in these spaces: A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy (University of Mississippi Press, with Mel Stanfill, 2020) and Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (Palgrave Macmillan, with Bridget Blodgett, 2017). Dr. Salter also works on the intersection of these technologies with challenges and opportunities in education: Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Games-Based Learning, Routledge, with Emily Johnson, 2022).