...and it has beaches, too Did you buy your agenda for next year already? In September 2010, the University of St Andrews will host a conference on 21st-Century European Literature. 'Mapping New Trends' - that is what the organizers hope to do, together with speakers specializing in any contemporary European literature, including Russian.I won't repeat the entire call for papers: you can easily find that elsewhere. Here it suffices to know that papers about 'Blosphere Narratives (Between Essay and Fiction)' are warmly welcomed. Now it may be my increasingly WWW-oriented mind, but it surprises me that an academic gathering on new literary trends only devotes one out of 26 possible topics to a digital development. Or have digital practices become so intrinsically embedded in contemporary culture that there is no need to point them out separately? Surely the web is bound to pop up in sessions devoted to, say, 'Diasporic identities,' 'New takes on old genres,' or 'Archiving and memorialising the past'?Digital or not, the conference is collecting proposals for individual papers or panels between now and September 1. Anyone longing to share thoughts on 'what is new, right now, in the national literature you research; what patterns are already discernable, what clusters of texts exploring common themes, ethical or aesthetic imperatives, theoretical or generic preoccupations, can be identified in the new millenium' - write the Russian-literature convenor and prepare yourself for Scottish autumn days.ER