Young Adult Literature 2.0: Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' and Digital Age Literary Practices

This study examines the progress of young adult (YA) literature in the twenty-first century, as influenced by Web 2.0 social networking technology and sliding structural temporalities of age and maturity in these digital times. The context is Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight saga, a pioneering example of an author purposefully engaging with online social networking communities and there encouraging derivative creativity, including Twilight fan fiction. This successful integration of YA literature with Web 2.0 is considered by first appraising tensions between traditional theoretical notions of the genre (and its readers) and contemporary manifestations of the same. Second is an investigation of the genre's evolving readership and textual practices using the Twilight series, focusing on literary activities of Digital Natives (young adults) in online social arenas. A concentration on the integration of national identity into Canadian Twilight fan fiction examines such evolving practices in reference to an American product (a threat of Americanization) being re-coded in a Canadian reader's personal, public and online spaces.