Authoring Online

Abstract

This article explores how young adult artist novels respond to the current proliferation of digital media technologies. Examining two recent publications-Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2013) and Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia (2017), this paper analyses how these novels interrogate the shifting author function against the backdrop of digitalisation, and how that shift in turn affects the representation of young people's artistic maturation. Informed by a keen awareness of the profound ways in which technological advancements reshape traditional experiences and expectations of authorship and artistic growth, these contemporary novels offer a unique prism through which to complicate the evolving genre of the Künstlerroman in adolescent literature.