Assistant Professor of Digital Media
Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue 14N–233
Cambridge, MA 02139 • USA
nickm@nickm.com • http://nickm.com
Interactive narrative · Imaginative and poetic digital writing · Material history of computational media · Video and computer games
Ph.D. in computer and information science, University of Pennsylvania, August 2007. Thesis: "Generating Narrative Variation in Interactive Fiction." Advisors: Mitchell P. Marcus and Gerald Prince.
M.S.E. in computer and information science, University of Pennsylvania, May 2003.
M.A. in creative writing, Boston University, May 2001. Thesis: "'Selected Poems' and Other Poems." Advisor: Robert Pinsky.
S.M. in media arts and sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1998. Thesis: "A Conversational Computer Character to Help Children Write Stories." Advisor: Justine Cassell.
B.S. in computer science, University of Texas at Austin, August 1995. Graduated with high honors, recipient of the Presidential Scholarship.
B.A. in liberal arts, Plan II Honors Program, University of Texas at Austin, May 1995. Dean's distinguished graduate, graduated with high honors and special honors, Phi Beta Kappa. Thesis: "Interfacing with Computer Narratives: Literary Possibilities for Interactive Fiction." Advisor: John Slatin.
Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. September 2007–Present. Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies.
Research Assistant, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. July 2002–May 2006. For Michael Kearns, Department of Computer and Information Science, on computational game theory, machine learning, and related topics.
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Baltimore. January–June 2002. School of Information Arts and Technologies and Division of Language, Literature, and Publications Design.
Editorial Assistant, AGNI, Boston University. September 2000–May 2001.
Research Assistant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, Cambridge. September 1996–June 1998. For Justine Cassell, Gesture and Narrative Language Group, on storytelling and creative writing systems.
Journalist, 1994–2002. Wrote about computing for Wired, Technology Review, Suck.com, and other publications.
February–May 2008: 21W.764J/CMS.609J/CMS.844, The Word Made Digital. A new course first offered this semester.
February–May 2008: CMS.951, Comparative Media Studies Graduate Workshop.
September–December 2007: CMS.950, Comparative Media Studies Graduate Workshop.
While at MIT, was a guest speaker in Media Theories and Methods I (CMS.790), Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative (21W.765J/21L.489J/CMS.845J), Introduction to Media Studies (21L.015). Taught a one-meeting workshop, "Writing under Constraints," for the Freshman Arts Program, 24 October 2007.
September–December 2006: Teaching assistant for and CSE 240, Introduction to Computer Architecture.
September–December 2003 and September–December 2005: Taught two sections of CSE 130, Programming Languages and Techniques I.
January–May 2004: Teaching assistant for CSE 112, Networked Life.
July–August 2003: Co-taught an introduction to programming course for pre-freshmen.
While at Penn, was a guest speaker in Media Theory (English 295/Film 211), Introduction to Programming with Java (ESE 115), Game Design & Development (CIS 564/910), Experimental Writing Seminar: Uncreative Writing (English 111), Virtual World Design (CSE 377), Networked Life (CSE 112), and Explorations in Information Technology (CSE 101). Taught "Underground Adventures: Interactive Fiction," a proseminar (one-meeting class) for entering freshme, 2 September 2003.
April–June and September–October 2003: Taught two undergraduate courses in computing.
January–June 2002: Taught three graduate courses on hypermedia production and programming.
September–December 2001: Taught one graduate course on electronic publishing.
Platform Studies. An MIT Press series. Series editors, Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. First book forthcoming in the Spring 2009 MIT Press catalog.
Video Computer System: The Atari 2600 Platform.
By Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. Forthcoming from The MIT Press, Spring 2009 catalog.
The Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1.
Electronic Literature Organization, 2006. A CD-ROM and Web anthology edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Stephanie Strickland, and Scott Rettberg.
Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction.
The MIT Press, 2003.
The New Media Reader.
The MIT Press, 2003. Edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Book design by Michael Crumpton. CD-ROM design by Nick Montfort. Introductions by Lev Manovich and Janet Murray.
2002: A Palindrome Story.
Spineless Books, 2002. By Nick Montfort and William Gillespie. Illustrated by Shelley Jackson. Design by Ingrid Ankerson.
"An Interactive Fiction System for Narrative Variation." Forthcoming in New Narratives, Theory and Practice. Editors, Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas. University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
"Obfuscated Code." In Software Studies, pp. 193–199. Editor, Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.
"Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction." In A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, pp. 267–282. Editors, Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman. Basil Blackwell, 2007.
"Playing to solve Savoir-Faire." In Videogame/Player/Text, pp. 175–190. Editors, Tanya Krzywinska and Barry Atkins. Manchester University Press, 2007.
"Narrative and Digital Media." In The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, pp. 172–186. Editor, David Herman. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
"Fretting the Player Character." In Second Person: Role Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, pp. 139–146. Editors, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. The MIT Press, 2007.
"Interactive Fiction." The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, vol. 5, pp. 731–735. Editor in chief, Keith Brown. Elsevier Publishers, 2005.
"Artificial Intelligence and Narrative" and "Interactive Fiction." In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, pp. 27-29 and pp249-250. Editors, David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. Routledge, 2005.
"Interactive Fiction as 'Story,' 'Game,' 'Storygame,' 'Novel,' 'World,' 'Literature,' 'Puzzle,' 'Problem,' 'Riddle,' and 'Machine,'" In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, pp. 310–317. Editors, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. The MIT Press, 2004. Also published online at ebr (Electronic Book Review), 2004.
"Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction." Forthcoming in IF Theory. Online since 8 January 2002. Version 3.5 online since 19 December 2003.
"The Coding and Execution of the Author." In Cybertext Yearbook 2002–2003, pp. 201–217. Editors, Markku Eskelinen and Raine Kosimaa. Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2003.
MIT chapter and other sections in Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, 1971–1984, by Van Burnham. The MIT Press, 2001.
"Combat in Context." Game Studies 6:1, December 2006.
"An Experimental Study of the Coloring Problem on Human Subject Networks," by Michael Kearns, Siddharth Suri, and Nick Montfort. Science vol. 313, no. 5788, pp. 824–827. 11 August 2006.
"And the Ports Have Names for the Sea: Reimagining Games for the Atari VCS." Internet Research 9.0, AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers), Copenhagen, 15–18 October 2008.
"Integrating a Plot Generator and an Automatic Narrator to Create and Tell Stories," by Nick Montfort and Rafael Pérez y Pérez. 5th International Joint Workshop on Computational Creativity, Mardrid, 17–19 September 2008.
"Computing Makes the 'Man': Programmer Creativity and the Platform Technology of the Atari Video Computer System," by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. 5th International Joint Workshop on Computational Creativity, Mardrid, 17–19 September 2008.
"Provocation by Program: Imagining a Next-Revolution Eliza," by Nick Montfort and Andrew Stern, ELO Visionary Landscapes, Vancouver, Washington, 31 May 2008.
"A 256-Character Program to Generate Poems," HASTAC II, UCLA, 24 May 2008.
"My Generation about Talking," Software Studies Workshop, UC San Diego, 21 May 2008.
"Ordering Events in Interactive Fiction Narratives." AAAI Fall Symposium, Arlington, Virginia, 9 November 2007. In Intelligent Narrative Technologies: Papers from the 2007 AAAI Fall Symposium, pp. 87–94. Brian S. Magerko and Mark O. Reidl, Program Cochairs. Technical Report FS-07-05, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA.
"Hammurabi's Code," by Nick Montfort and Michael Mateas. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), Portland, Maine, 2 November 2007. Presented by Nick Montfort.
"Platform Studies: Computing and Creativity on the VCS, MPC, and Wii," by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. Digital Arts and Culture 2007 (perthDAC), Perth, Australia, 16 September 2007. Presented by Fox Harrell.
"Appropriation and Collaboration in Digital Writing," a panel discussion with Scott Rettberg and Jill Walker. MiT5 (Media in Transition): Creativity, Ownership, and Collaboration in the Digital Age, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 28 April 2007.
"New Media as Material Constraint: An Introduction to Platform Studies," by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort. The 1st International HASTAC Conference, Duke University, Durham, North Carolia, 21 April 2007. Presented by Ian Bogost. In Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface, pp. 176-192. Proceedings of the First International HASTAC Conference.
"Natural Language Generation and Narrative Variation in Interactive Fiction." In Computational Aesthetics: Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Beauty and Happiness: Papers from the 2006 AAAI Workshop, pp. 45–52, edited by Hugo Liu and Rada Mihalcea. Technical Report WS-06–04. American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Menlo Park, California. July 2006.
"A Box, Darkly: Obfuscated Code, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics," by Michael Mateas and Nick Montfort. In Proceedings of the 2005 Digital Arts and Culture Conference, pp. 144–153, IT University of Copenhagen, December 2005.
"How Stella Got Her Text Back: Trajectories of Word and Image in Creative Computing." Elective Affinities, the IAWIS/AIERTI 7th International Conference on Word & Image Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 26 September 2005.
"Continuous Paper: The Early Materiality and Workings of Electronic Literature." Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Philadelphia, 28 December 2004.
"Continuous Paper: Print interfaces and early computer writing." ISEA, Helsinki, 20 August 2004. Presented by Scott Rettberg.
"Narratology and Interactive Fiction." SSNL's Narrative: An International Conference, Burlington, Vermont, 24 April 2004.
"Combat in Context." Form, Culture, and Video Game Criticism, Princeton University, 6 March 2004.
"Continuous Paper." History of Material Texts Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, 23 February 2004.
"Decisions & Learning in Computational Behavioral Game Theory." Poster presented at ICML-2003, Twentieth International Conference on Conference on Machine Learning, 23 August 2003, and the Young Investigators Poster Session at the DARPA/IPTO Cognitive Systems Conference, 12 November 2003.
"Read Enable: Interpreting & Emulating Electronic Literature." ACH/ALLC 2003, University of Georgia, 30 May 2003.
"Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre's Varicella." By Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop. MelbourneDAC 2003, Digital Arts and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 20 May 2003.
"The Editor as Conservator." Talk on the panel "Whatever it Takes: The New Media Editor," MelbourneDAC 2003, Digital Arts and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 20 May 2003.
"ifMap: A Mapping System for Cooperatively Playing Interactive Fiction Online." By Jessica Rubart and Nick Montfort. Proceedings of the Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE) Conference, pp. 364–369. Darmstadt, Germany, Fraunhofer IRB Verlag, 24–26 March 2003.
"Arby: An Agent for Mediation & Bargaining," by Michael Kearns, Charles Isbell, Nick Montfort and Ben Packer. AAAI Fall Symposium, Cape Cod, 16 November 2002.
"Why Consider 'Multimedia'?" Panel talk, ACM Hypertext 2002, College Park, MD, 15 June 2002.
"The Line / The Line: Interactive Fiction and Symmetry in Human-Computer Text Exchange." ACM SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, Los Angeles, 14 August 2001.
"Computer Co-Authors for Fiction." Computers and Writing, Fort Worth, Texas, 27 May 2000.
Note on Zork. Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: The Next Level, p. 64. Edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger, Birkhäuser, 2007.
Review of Façade, interactive drama by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. SPAG (Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games) Newsletter 41,15 July 2005.
"A Bad Machine Made of Words." Review of Bad Machine, interactive fiction by Dan Shiovitz. 17 August 2004, trAce.
"Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre's Varicella," by Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop. In Fineart Forum 17:8, August 2003.
Reply in “New Media Literature: A Roundtable Discussion on Aesthetics, Audiences, and Histories,” part two. Questions by Thomas Swiss. NC 2, 2003.
"Roboprotest" Review of the art of the IAA (Institute for Applied Autonomy). Technology Review, September–October 2000.
"The Tome of the Unknown Authors" Review of the hypertext novel The Unknown. Technology Review,May–June 2000.
"Digital Decay." Review of digital works The Impermanence Agent by Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al. and [phage] by Mary Flanagan. Technology Review, January–February 2000.
"Cybertext Killed the Hypertext Star." Review of Espen Aarseth's Cybertext. In ebr (Electronic Book Review), Winter 2000/2001.
Review of Dark Mage, interactive fiction by Greg Troutman. SPAG (Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games) Newsletter 22,15 September 2000.
Review/discussion of The Ed Report by William Gillespie and Nick Montfort. Academic Writing. 17 October 2000.
Review of Christminster, interactive fiction by Gareth Rees. SPAG (Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games) Newsletter 20,15 March 2000.
"Ballard's Bazaar." Review of A User's Guide to the Millennium by J.G. Ballard. Hotwired.com,Pop channel, 8 August 1996.
"A Forgotten Classicist's Work on Ovid's Metamorphoses." On Ditters von Dittersdorf's symphonies. In Classical Outlook, Winter 1991–1992.
"A quarta Era da Ficção Interactiva." ["Interactive Fiction's Fourth Era."] Nada 8, October 2006. Translated by Paulo Urbano.
Born-Again Bits: A Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature, by Alan Liu, David Durand, Nick Montfort, Merrilee Proffitt, Liam R. E. Quin, Jean-Hugues Rety, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Report. Electronic Literature Organization, 5 August 2005.
"Discovering Communities through Information Structure and Dynamics: a Review of Recent Research." University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report MS-CIS-04–18. 9 August 2004.
Acid-Free Bits: Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Literature, by Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Pamphlet. Electronic Literature Organization, 14 June 2004.
"Literary Games." Poems that Go 14, Fall 2003.
"DAC 2000: A Choose-Your-Own-Trip-Report!" August 2000.
"In Search of Webs Past: 'Survival of the Hittest' Leaves a Precious Record Crumbling." Technology Review, July–August 2000.
"The Cyborg Campus: Balancing the Traditional and the Virtual in the College of the Future." Cover story in Texas Alcalde, September–October 1999.
"Imaginative, Aesthetic, Executable Writing." Codework: Exploring relations between creative writing practices and software engineering. NSF Workshop, West Virginia University, Center for Literary Computing, April 3–6, 2008.
"Narrative Variation for Interactive Fiction." NT2, Université du Québec à Montréal, 20 March 2008.
"The Atari VCS: Games and the Platform." University of Baltimore, 15 December 2007.
"Skinnable Worlds." Keynote, World Building: Space and Community, the 2007 University of Florida Conference on Games and Digital Media. 2 March 2007.
"Exercises in Interactive Fiction Style." Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, MIT. 14 December 2006.
"Esoteric Languages, Obfuscated Code, and the Aesthetics of Programming." Programming Languages Group, Harvard University. 22 November 2006.
"New Media's Workings." Imagining Intellectual Property in a Networked World Working Group, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 25 April 2006.
"Interactive Fiction." Off Topic Lunch, Inference Group, University of Cambridge, 13 December 2005.
"Collaborative Writing and Interactive Fiction." The Upgrade!, Eyebeam Atelier, New York, 8 December 2005.
"A Box, Darkly: Obfuscated Code, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics." Digital Dialogues series, MITH (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities), University of Maryland, 17 November 2005.
"Riddle Machines." New England Regional New Media Consortium (NMC) Conference, Yale University, 6 October 2005.
"On Authorship, E-lit, and Blogs." Talk by videoconference to the Atelier-Auteur (Authorship Workshop) of RTP-DOC in Paris. 17 March 2005.
"Collaborative Online Writing, Interactive Fiction, and New Media." STG (Scholarly Technology Group), Brown University, 1 December 2004.
"Collaborative Online Writing, Interactive Fiction, and New Media." MITH (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities), University of Maryland College Park. 19 November 2004.
"Interactive Fiction and New Media History." Digital Arts and Electronic Literature Series, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. 15 October 2004.
"Figuring Interactive Fiction." Invited guest graduate talk. Narr@tive: Digital Storytelling, University of California, Los Angeles, 22 April 2004.
"Twisty Little Passages." E-Fest 2004, Brown University, 19 February 2004.
"Condemned to Reload It: Forgetting New Media" Copyright and the Networked Computer: A Stakeholder's Congress, Washington, D.C., 8 November 2003.
"Further Reading: Interpreters & Emulators for Electronic Literature." e(X)literature, University of California at Santa Barbara, 4 April 2003.
"The New Media Reader: Overview of Migration Strategies." With Noah Wardrip-Fruin. e(X)literature, University of California at Santa Barbara, 3 April 2003.
"New Media: Can the Past Talk to the Future?" With Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Comparative Media Studies, MIT, 13 March 2003.
"Reading New Media." On a panel with Robert Coover, David Durand, Bill Seaman, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. STG, Brown University, 11 March 2003.
"Twisty Little Passages: Interactive Fiction as a Form of Literature." Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 7 November 2002.
Grand Text Auto. With Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Scott Rettberg, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Group blog about computer narrative, poetry, games, and art. May 2003–Present.
"The Purpling: A Poem." Hypertext prose poem. The Iowa Review Web 9: 2, special issue, "Instruments and Playable Texts," guest edited by Stuart Moulthrop. July 2008.
"Ream/Rame." Multimedia edition of Ream with French translation/adaptation. This edition and French text by Anick Bergeron. In bleuOrange 1, March 2008.
The Session. Scenario for the StoryBox interactive performance stage, Interactive Performance Lab, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 16 March 2008.
ppg256 (Perl Poetry Generator in 256 characters.) January 2008.
Currency. Four one-minute video pieces. Video by Roderick Coover, text by Nick Montfort. January 2007.
CC. Digital poem commissioned for Carmen Conde's centenary in 2007. June 2006.
Digital Ream, an HTML edition of Ream, May 2006.
Ream. A 500-page poem written and printed on paper in one day in April 2006.
Book and Volume. Long interactive fiction. Auto Mata, 2005.
Mystery House Taken Over. With Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, and other collaborators. A reimplementation of Mystery House (Roberta and Ken Williams, 1980) as a free, open, cross-platform, and easily modifiable kit, launched with several modified versions of the game, including Mystery House Kracked by the Flippy Disk. 15 March 2005.
Implementation. With Scott Rettberg. A serial novel published on stickers, with a website documenting where people have placed parts of the novel. January 2004–December 2004.
Fields of Dream. With Rachel Stevens. Literary game with reader collaboration. Poems that Go, Fall 2003.
Dead Reckoning. Short interactive fiction. Translation of the Spanish Olvido Mortal by Andrés Viedma Peláez. July 2003.
Unready.net. With Josh Kellar. Re-captioned version of Ready.gov. February 2003.
New in Email 1 January 2002 – 20 December 2002. A lexicon published in a booklet. January 2003.
"The Girl and the Wolf." Variable Web tale. BeeHive, March 2001.
Ad Verbum. Short interactive fiction. Winner, 2000 Best Puzzles XYZZY Award; 1st place pick of authors, 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition. October 2000.
The Ed Report. With William Gillespie, design by Dylan Meissner. Serialized hypertext novel and hoax. 2000.
Seized House, writer. 16mm short film, black and white, mono sound, 15 mins. Produced and directed by Brett Sharpton. Based on Julio Cortázar's "Casa tomada (House Taken Over)." June 2000.
Pullover, writer and producer. Super8 short film on video, color, mono sound, 9 1/2 mins. Directed by Daniel Erickson. Inspired by Julio Cortázar's "No se culpe a nadie (Don't Blame Anyone)." December 1999.
Winchester's Nightmare: A Novel Machine. Long interactive fiction. October 1999.
The Help File. Hypertext/conceptual fiction. Windows help file, accompanied by the pamphlet "Getting Started." Edition of 100. June 1999.
STREAM. Short online anthology of literature in translation. Editor. October–December 1995.
"Poem" in In Medias Res, Spring 2008.
"He did, eh?" in UpRightDown 1, February 2008.
"Reflections" in CrossConnect 25, Feburary 2007 and XConnect: Writers of the Information Age 9, 2007.
"Limit," "The Hunt," "Who Fall," "The Obliterator," "The Established Ones," and "Sight's Pillar" in Curiobox 1, Spring 2006.
"Flings" in Quake 2, Spring 2006.
"Sheik of Poetry" in Speakeasy 2006.
"Tichborne's Lexicon" in Horse Less Review 2, Spring 2005.
"The Exhaustion of Libraries" in Boston University Arts & Sciences 12, Spring 2003; recording on the CD Kelly Writers House: 1995/96–2005/06 The First 10 Years.
"Another Hole" in Passager 37, 2003.
"Riddles" in Cauldron and Net 4, Autumn 2002.
"The Unrelenting" in Crowd 2, Summer 2002.
"Soyuz" in Welter, 2002.
"Top Row Retort" in Newspoetry.com, 2000. Originally appeared in a different form as "Upper Typewriter Row," Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics 33:1, February 2000.
Ream/Rame read at the launch of bleuOrange with translator Anick Bergeron. Three other authors presented work. Oboro, Montréal, 20 March 2008.
Poetry reading with Mairead Byrne in the Demolicious series, Out of the Blue Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 December 2007.
Grand Text Auto exhibition. With Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Scott Rettberg, Andrew Stern, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and others. UCI Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, California. October 4–December 15, 2007.
Lost One read in the Open Mic & Mouse, The Future of Electronic Literature Symposium, Electronic Literature Organization and Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland, 2 May 2007.
Currency screened in the program Heavy Mental at the Philadelphia Film Festival, International House, 9 April 2007.
Poetry reading with Deb Olin Unferth at the opening of Art & Science XXIII: Panoramas and Other Circular Stories, 12 January 2007.
Currency exhibited at the Ester M. Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, January 12–March 31 2007.
Book and Volume exhibited at the medi@terra 7th International Art and Technology Festival: Gaming Realities, Athens, October 4–8 2006.
Adventure and Cloak of Darkness in a new IF system with varying narration read at E-Fest 2006, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, March 22, 2006.
Implementation read at Provflux, The Steel Yard, Providence, Rhode Island, May 28, 2005.
Implementation exhibited in CUBE2, Providence, Rhode Island as part of Provflux, May 27–June 4, 2005.
Mystery House Taken Over read in Re:Writing, Boston Cyberarts Festival. John Cayley, Thalia Field, Yael Kanarek, and Noah Wardrip Fruin also read. 25 April 2005 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and 26 April 2005 at the Boston Public Library.
Penn Arts Day luncheon reading: "The Ballad of Alain Robert" and "The Exhaustion of Libraries," Arthur Ross Gallery, 17 March 2005.
Implementation exhibited in the storefront space at the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, January 1–31, 2005.
Ubu meets Gertrude (Towards a Post-textual Avant-garde.) A public conversation with Johanna Drucker, Christian Bök, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Nick Montfort, and Scott Rettberg. Slought Foundation. Philadelphia, 28 December 2004.
On William Gillespie's Eclectic Seizure, BSR88.1 FM, read "The Spectacle," "The Ballad of Alain Robert," and other poems. 1 December 2004.
Implementation exhibited at FILE (Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica), Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 22–December 12, 2004.
Dead Reckoning by Andrés Viedma Peláez (trans. Nick Montfort) exhibited at ALT+CTRL / A Festival of Independent and Alternative Games, UCI Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, California, October 5–November 24, 2004.
Book and Volume read at Interactive Fiction Walkthroughs. Star Foster, Dan Ravipinto, and Emily Short also read from interactive fiction. Hosted by Scott Rettberg. Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, 27 October 2004.
Poetry Engines and Prosthetic Imaginations. A public conversation with Bob Perelman, Nick Montfort, and Jean-Michel Rabaté. Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, 29 April 2004.
2002: A Palindrome Story read with William Gillespie and Implementation read with Scott Rettberg in Join Work. Dirk Stratton also read from The Unknown with the others. Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, 14 February 2004.
On Live at the Writers House, WXPN 88.5 FM. "City," "The Exhaustion of Libraries," and other poems. Taped live 17 November 2003, broadcast 20 November 2003.
Regular reader at the Speakeasy open mic at the Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, Fall 2002–Spring 2007. Among other poems and texts, Ream was read there 26 April 2006 and Dead Reckoning was read there 1 September 2003.
Ad Verbum read at Digital Intercourse. With Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland. Hosted by Scott Ambrose Reilly. The Remote Lounge, New York, 20 November 2002.
2002: A Palindrome Story exhibited at FILE (Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica), Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 8–22, 2002.
On Eclectic Seizure, WEFT 90.1 FM. Poems, Winchester's Nightmare, and 2002: A Palindrome Story(read with William Gillespie). Urbana, IL. Broadcast live 17 July 2002.
ACM Hypertext reading at University of Maryland: 2002: A Palindrome Story. College Park, MD, 14 June 2002.
ELO Symposium reading at UCLA: Ad Verbum. Los Angeles, CA, 4 April 2002.
The Ed Report and Winchester's Nightmare read at Digital Intercourse. Shelley Jackson and Adam Cadre also read from interactive works. Hosted by Scott Ambrose Reilly. The New School, New York, NY, 19 November 2001.
Winchester's Nightmare read during Siggraph 2001. Los Angeles, CA, 15 August 2001.
Villadom read at A Night at the Cybertexts, Digital Arts and Culture 2001. Eight other authors presented new electronic literature works. Providence, Rhode Island, 27 April 2001.
Boston T1 Party reading at the Boston Public Library: The Ed Report read with William Gillespie at the Boston T1 Party. Nine other authors presentd work. Boston Public Library, 25 April 2001.
The Ed Report read with William Gillespie at GiG 2.0. Center Portion, Chicago, 9 December 2000.
Winchester's Nightmare read at eNarrative 1. Boston, 11 November 2000.
The Ed Report read in the Reading on Bay State Road. Diane Greco and Scott Rettberg also read. Boston, 10 November 2000.
The Ed Report read with William Gillespie at Digital Arts and Culture 2000, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, 3 August 2000.
The Ed Report read with William Gillespie in the Electronic Literature Organization reading. Nine other authors also read. Center for Advanced Technology/Media Research Lab, New York University, 16 June 2000.
The Help File read at the MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999.
Winchester's Nightmare and The Help File exhibited at Digital Arts and Culture, Atlanta, Georgia, 28 October 1999.
Finalist, Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition 2007, Book and Volume.
Commission, by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) to develop Mystery House Taken Over with collaborators for the Turbulence web site. Made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Winner, review award, 2004 New Media Article Writing Competition, trAce/Writers for the Future, "A Bad Machine Made of Words."
Selection, Twisty Little Passages, for the Book Sense 76, a list of notable books recommended by independent booksellers, January/February 2004.
Co-winner, 2001 Academy of American Poets Prize at Boston University.
Winner, 2000 Best Puzzles XYZZY Award, Ad Verbum.
1st place selection of Competition authors and voted 4th place overall in the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition, Ad Verbum.
Honorable mention, 2000 trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition, The Ed Report by William Gillespie and Nick Montfort.
Mitchell, Alex and Nick Montfort, "Tools for Telling: How Game Development Systems Shape Interactive Storytelling," Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab research project, 2008–2010.
National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars Award, 1990.
Advisor, Michael Danziger, "Information Visualization for the People," S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, MIT, 2008.
Committee member, Luis Blackaller, "Performing Process: The Artist Studio as Interactive Art," S.M. in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, 2008.
Committee member, Brett Camper, "Homebrew and the Social Construction of Gaming: Community, Creativity and Legal Context of Amateur Game Boy Advance Development," S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, MIT, 2005.
HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) steering committee, June 2008–present.
Founder and organizer, Purple Blurb digital writing series, MIT, September 2007–present.
Director, Electronic Literature Organization, September 2003–present.
Reviewer, The MIT Press, 2005–present.
Reviewer, Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, 2001–present.
Occasional reviewer for other journals and presses, including Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) and Computers and the Humanities.
Program committee, AAAI 2009 Spring Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies 2, Stanford University, 23–25 March 2009.
Program committee, 5th International Joint Workshop on Computational Creativity, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, 17–19 September 2008.
Vice president, Electronic Literature Organization, February 2004–June 2008.
Committee to revise the Writing and Humanistic Studies Major, September–December 2007.
Founder and organizer, MACHINE electronic literature reading series, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, January 2004–December 2006.
Hub (volunteer planning committee) member, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, October 2003–August 2007
Organizer, AUTOSTART: A Festival of Digital Literature. Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, October 26 & 27 2006.
Curator, Composing: Harry Mathews' Worlds and Words. Exhibit at the Kamin Gallery, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania. April–August 2004.
Technology committee, PAD (Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination) project, Electronic Literature Organization, August 2002–June 2004.
Program committee, AAAI-2004, San Jose, California, 25–29 July 2004.
Organizing committee, Penn Engineering Graduate Research Symposium, December 2003–February 2004.
Academic advisory board, Digital Arts and Culture 2003 (MelbourneDAC), Melbourne, Australia, 19–23 May 2003.
Reviewer, ACM Hypertext 2002, University of Maryland, College Park, 11–15 July 2002.
Curator, ELO State of the Arts Symposium Gallery, with Loss Pequeño Glazier and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. University of California, Los Angeles, April 2002.
Organizer, Digital Intercourse reading. Produced by Wiresight at the New School, 19 November 2001. Three authors read from interactive works as a host interacted with them.
Organizer, Reading on Bay State Road, Boston, 10 November 2000. Three authors read from digital writing.
Organizer, A Night at the Cybertexts reading. Digital Arts and Culture, Brown University, 27 April 2001. Nine authors presented new electronic literature works.
Program committee, Digital Arts and Culture 2001, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 26–28 April 2001.
Organizer, The Boston T1 Party reading. With Scott Rettberg. Eleven readers presented their work. Boston Public Library, Electronic Literature Organization & Boston Cyberarts Festival, 25 April 2001.
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