This Library Has Secret Books From Your Favorite Authors, But They Can’t Be Read Until 2114
The Scottish artist Katie Paterson is collecting 100 unpublished manuscripts that won’t be released to the public during most of the writers’ lifetimes.
In 2014, Katie Paterson began a long-term art project, one that will be finished long after she’s dead.
The artwork, dubbed the Future Library, will be completed in 2114. The project’s intention is to, in the end, have an anthology of 100 books, one manuscript from one author per year, made with paper from trees out of a newly planted forest in Norway. Every year, the Future Library Trust, the group guiding the project, pick a new author to contribute a manuscript. The author is told at the beginning of the year, in an email, and has the entire year to finish the manuscript. The chosen author has no obligation to tell people what they’ll write or how long their manuscripts will be — they can write whatever they want, from poetry to fiction to nonfiction.
The manuscript will then be held in trust by the author, unpublished, and will not be released to the public until 2114.
Says CNN, “There are only two rules: that the manuscript must be a new, unpublished work and…
