Spark Artist

Robert Arellano is a pioneering literary artist at the frontier of fiction and digital innovation. His work creates interactive storyworlds that challenge traditional boundaries between reader and participant, transforming passive audiences into active co-creators through nonlinear narrative environments and immersive installations. He created the web’s first hypertext novel, Sunshine '69, and the internet's earliest interactive 'zine, Albert Hofmann's Strange Mistake. Six traditional novels, published by Akashic Books and Soft Skull/Counterpoint, use experimental techniques to explore the nature of memory, identity and the immigrant experience.

As Founding Director of the Center for Emerging Media & Digital Arts, Arellano has spent 15 years teaching collaborative storytelling and transmedia design at Southern Oregon University. Arellano's cultural criticism appears in Radiolab, The Village Voice, McSweeney's Believer, Tin House, and scholarly anthologies including Routledge's Repair: Sustainable Design Futures.

Awards for his work include Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction (2014), Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellowship in Literary Arts (2016), PLAYA residency (2017), and multiple research grants from the Mellon Foundation Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (2022, 2023). He served as Board Chair for Oregon Humanities and as a Fellow and Mentor for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) New Leadership Academy. He has held residencies and delivered keynote presentations at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Europe's Centre for Digital Narrative, and the Center for Art Research at University of Oregon's Knight Campus.

Arellano's practice continues to explore how emerging technologies can expand literary expression while connecting with audiences throughout Oregon and across digital communities.

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