A Laurie Anderson manuscript will be sealed away for almost a century in secret library
Laurie Anderson has become the 13th contributor to the Future Library project, writing a manuscript that will remain unread until 2114, ten years on from its founding. The legendary artist joins Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong in the Oslo-based initiative, which stores texts for future generations in a special silent room.
The project was conceived by Scottish visual artist Katie Paterson in 2014, and will eventually publish the full anthology of manuscripts using paper made from 1,000 spruce trees planted in the Nordmarka forest outside Oslo. (The City of Oslo signed an agreement to ensure the forest remains under the Future Library Trust's stewardship for the project's duration.) Anderson's contribution is allowed to take the form of a text, a score, a story, a set of instructions, or "something for which we do not yet have a name," Paterson said, as reported by the Guardian.
Anderson, who has published several books alongside her music career and received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2024, recounted how her mother used to hide chocolate in the fork of an oak tree near their home, creating what Anderson called "extra incentive that day to get to the library." The childhood memory is part of what attracted her to the project.
Paterson said Anderson was asked because she "has spent a lifetime sending signals into the unknown. For decades, she has explored how we tell stories, how we remember, and how we imagine what is yet to come."
For the manuscript, Anderson said she hopes to write "something useful about love" for readers in the next century. "My favourite books are the ones in which I can hear someone's voice, which is why I'll try my best to make myself clear to the people who come across these books in the next century."
The project's other contributors include writer-actor-comedian David Mitchell, Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, Turkish writer Elif Shafak, prize-winning author of the My Struggle series Karl Ove Knausgård, Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga, German publisher and writer Judith Schalansky, Mexican novelist Valeria Luiselli, Native American writer Tommy Orange, and Indian-American historical fiction writer Amitav Ghosh.
Margaret Atwood was the first ever contributor, back in 2014, when she submitted a work titled Scribbler Moon.
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