Christy Dena

Christy Dena is an Australian writer, game designer, and scholar. Her scholarship and design practice in transmedia storytelling has been widely cited, especially for promoting the term "cross-media storytelling". She is also known for defining the term "transmedial fictions" for The Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Digital Textuality. She created her own studio, Universe Creation 101, where she creates original projects and does consultations and freelance work. She likes to combine live social experiences with online technology, traditional forms of screen (film and games) and paper-based objects (tabletop and books).

Life, education, and career Dena completed her PhD in media, Narrative, and Game Studies at the University of Sydney in 2009. Her dissertation on transmedia, Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments "put her on the [transmedia] map."

Dena was the first Digital Writer in Residence for the Australia Council for the Arts and the Queensland University of Technology at The Cube, where she created the large installation "Robot. Dena works closely with unceded Boonwrrung Country. In 2012, she was the Digital Writing Ambassador for the Emerging Writers Festival. She has also exhibited her work, such as Recharge at the 6th International Biennial of Media Art.

Dena, Christy (2018) "DIYSPY - Live Remote Play at Computer Human Interaction (CHI) Play'18" was a Live game experience using zoom and an app.

Alternative Reality Games Dena has worked on alternate reality games.

Nokia's Conspiracy for Good, Cisco's The Hunt, and the Australian Broadcasting Company's Bluebird AR. She has also created touch-screen installations for The Cube (Robot University) at Queensland University of Technology This is a radio drama (termed a "web audio adventure) with a large voice cast and an in-game browser. The protagonist attempts to discover the meaning of death within an overworld and an underworld. The work is both game and digital storytelling.

Awards Dena has won interactive writing awards from the Australian Writers' Guild award for Interactive Media and WA Premier's Book Award for Digital Narrative for (AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS). This work was also a finalist for the Best Writing in a Game Award at the 2012 Freeplay Independent Gaming Festival and was shown at the 2014 Media Arts Show for the Electronic Literature Organization.