Bringing together internationally leading scholars and practitioners whose work engages with the continued importance of literary experiment, this book takes up the question of 'reading' in the contemporary climate from culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives. New reading practices are both offered and traced in the works of avant-garde writers across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including John Cage, Erica Hunt, Joan Retallack, Caroline Bergvall, and Uljana Wolf, among others. Exploring the socio-political significance of literary experiment, the book yields new critical approaches to reading avant-garde writing..