Deena Larsen's "Marble Springs 1.0"
Deena Larsen's Biography
Deena Larsen began working in hypertext before she knew what hypertext was. The original concept for Marble Springs was expressed on a shower curtain using threads of yarn to link poems, narratives, characters, and locations. She took the shower curtain with her to conferences and performances as a way to explain the notion of hypertext to audiences unfamiliar with it. As Larsen notes, “To understand the people, the culture, the times, requires understanding intricate webs of connections.” The increasingly intricate webs of connections led her from the shower curtain to Hypercard and from there on to Storyspace, Wikis, HTML, and other methods of using links to construct a structure on which to hang meaning.
Larsen earned a B.A. in English and Logic from Northern Colorado University and was awarded best senior thesis award in 1986 for “Nansense Ya Snorsted: A logical look at nonsense”. In 1991 Larsen earned her M.A. from the University of Colorado in English. In addition to a career as a technical writer with the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation, Larsen also has long history mentoring and teaching writers about hypertext and structured linking in literature through workshops, organized online chats, and in the classroom. Larsen collected and published her pedagogical approach to teaching electronic literature in the textbook: *Fun da mentals: Rhetorical Devices for Electronic Literature.*As a creator of hypertexts, Larsen has authored over 30 works that include Marble Springs (Versions 1.0-3.0) "Samplers," “Firefly," “The Language of the Void," and “Ferris Wheels." Larsen’s work has appeared in key electronic literature publication venues such as The Iowa Review Web, Poems that Go, Riding the Meridian, and Word Circuits Gallery.