Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

What is fanfiction, and what is it not? Why does fanfiction matter? And what makes it so important to the future of literature?

Fic is a groundbreaking exploration of the history and culture of fan writing and what it means for the way we think about reading, writing, and authorship. It's a story about literature, community, and technology—about what stories are being told, who's telling them, how, and why.

With provocative discussions from both professional and fan writers, on subjects from Star Trek to The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter, Twilight, and beyond, Fic sheds light on the widely misunderstood world(s) of fanfiction—not only how fanfiction is transforming the literary landscape, but how it already has.

Fic features a foreword by Lev Grossman (author of The Magicians) and interviews with Jonathan Lethem, Doug Wright, Eurydice (Vivean Dean), and Katie Forsythe/wordstrings.

Cyndy Aleo (algonquinrt; d0tpark3r)

V. Arrow (aimmyarrowshigh)

Tish Beaty (his_tweet)

Brad Bell

Amber Benson

Peter Berg (Homfrog)

Kristina Busse

Rachel Caine

Francesca Coppa

Randi Flanagan (BellaFlan)

Jolie Fontenot

Wendy C. Fries (Atlin Merrick)

Ron Hogan

Bethan Jones

Christina Lauren (Christina Hobbs/tby789 and Lauren Billings/LolaShoes)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Rukmini Pande and Samira Nadkarni

Chris Rankin

Tiffany Reisz

Andrew Shaffer

Andy Sawyer

Heidi Tandy (Heidi8)

Darren Wershler

Jules Wilkinson (missyjack)

Jen Zern (NautiBitz)

Anne Jamison is associate professor of English at the University of Utah, where she teaches and writes about literature and culture from the 18th century to the present. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton and is the author of Poetics en passant (Palgrave, 2009), the forthcoming Kafka's Other Prague, and a variety of essays and articles—as well as a blog about teaching fanfiction, and a lot of tweets. Her work on fanfiction has been quoted in publications from The New York Review of Books to The Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch. She lives happily in Salt Lake City in a house full of children, basset hounds, and an avant-garde poet. And yes, of course she's written fic.