Literature, materiality, technology: Australian literary journals as “assemblages of works”

Literary journals have always held a changing and uncertain place in Australian cultural life, and in the new millennium, the digital revolution both destabilised and provided new possibilities for literary journal publishing. While literary journals have a long history of adapting to challenges and to change, material changes in publication media brought about by the introduction of digital publishing technology struck deeper than ever before, and prompted questions about journals’ survival and relevance in the digital age – questions that, as yet, have been the subject of little academic inquiry. This paper presents preliminary research that aims to fill this gap in our knowledge of literary journals in the digital age. In doing so, the research project investigated the relationship Australian literary journals have with different media using a methodology that combined interviews with Australian literary journal editors, textual analysis, and new media and literary theory. The paper argues that the material form ‘intermediates’ a work, and that journals are remaking themselves as assemblages that rely on a dialogue between print and digital formats. The paper asks how literary journal editors achieve their goals for their publication by negotiating through and between the specificities of different media, asking what practices characterise this new media dialogic, and how it is situated in the wider field of the literary journal. It presents some surprising findings on the lasting importance of print, and raises questions about literary value and how it is symbolised through media