Will Self: On the Digital Essay with Nicholas Spice, Dan Franklin, and Helen Jeffrey

Laptops, tablets, smart phones and e-readers are starting to challenge books and magazines as vehicles for the written word. But are they changing the way we read, and will they call forth new kinds of writing? Will Self led a panel discussion about these and other intriguing questions thrown up by the new technology, with special reference to ‘Kafka's Wound’, the digital literary essay he has written in collaboration with The London Review of Books for The Space, a new project from the Arts Council/BBC digital arts. The panel included Nicholas Spice, publisher of the LRB, and Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher at the Random House Group, whose work involves exploring what the ‘book’ is, and can be, in the digital age.