Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 2: Documenting Pre-Web Born Digital Media

Richard Holeton's "Figurski at Findhorn on Acid"

Richard Holeton's Biography

Richard Holeton has lead distinguished careers as a teacher, educational administrator, textbook author, and author of creative hypertext. His acclaimed hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. is his most recognized work of electronic literature. Across his various creative endeavors Holeton has been recognized with  a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship (Fiction); an Artists Fellowship in Fiction, California Arts Council; the Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman Fellowship, MacDowell Colony;  the Brown Foundation Fellow/Dora Maar House Fellowship; and the Transatlantic Review Award/Henfield Foundation. His writing has been published in venues such as Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, Vassar Review, ZYZZYVA, and Forklift, Ohio.

Holeton served as the Assistant Vice Provost for Learning Environments, Emeritus at Stanford University. Prior to that he was Senior Director of Learning Environment and Director of Academic Computing Service, also at Stanford. In the Classroom, Holeton has 12 years of teaching experience teaching writing in digital and networked environments. His work from this aspect of his career has been published in the textbook Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age and  Educause’s Learning Space Rating System, of which he is the co-creator.

Richard visited the Electronic Literature Lab in February of 2019, where he traversed Figurski at Findhorn on Acid and donated items from his papers to our archives.

A complete list of works by Holeton and excellent critical article by Chelsea Miya can be found at the Electronic Literature Directory. 
 
Versions of Figurski at Findhorn on Acid

✭ Version 1.0: The Earliest Drafts, from 1996-2000, Print and Digital
1.1. “Streleski on Findhorn on Acid,” Grain Poetry & Prose, Winter 1996. This short-short was the genesis for Figurski. It was the First place Prize winner in the Grain Postcard Story Contest.
1.2: Artifactions 1.1 , 1997, for Storyspace 1.3
1.3: Robert Kendall's fall, 1996, online class, offered through the New School for Social Research, on "Hypertext Poetry and Fiction."
1.4: Text produced for Professor Michael Tratner's novels course at Bryn Mawr College in spring, 1998.

✭ Version 2.0: First Complete Draft of Novel for both Print and Digital 
2.1: Pre-publication version, turned in to San Francisco State University (on diskettes) for Holeton’s MFA thesis in 1998, both Mac and Window; the first electronic thesis at the university

✭ Version 3.0: Figurski for Storyspace 2.X on Mac, all on CD-ROM; the canonical version of the work
3.1: Uncorrected proofs for PC, 2000
3.2: Early self-published version on CD-ROM, 2001
3.2a: Unlabeled, with accompanying directions on pink paper, 2001
3.2b: Labeled with Ralph the Swimming Pig, produced for entry to ELO competition, 2001
3.3: Version published by Eastgate Systems, Inc., in jewel case with final art, 2001

✭ Version 4.0: Figurski for PC
4.1: Beta 1999 Windows version, listed as FIG95.SSP in archives
4.2: Final 2001 version for Eastgate, listed as FIGURSKI.SSP in archives

Version 5.0: 2nd Ed., created for Storyspace 3.0 for Mac
✭ 5.1: Self-published, 2008

✭ Version 6.0: 2nd Ed., created for Storyspace 3.0 for PC
6.1: Unpublished 2nd edition Windows version, 2008

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