Date: August 25, 2009, 7:30pm
Location: IMU Main Lounge

The Annual Cassandra S. Foens, M.D. Welcome Week lecture

Exclusively Representing Frank Warren, Creator of the PostSecret Project.

Frank Warren is the sole founder and curator of the PostSecret Project: A collection of over 200,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards mailed anonymously from around the world, displaying the soulful secrets we never voice.

Warren's first book, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (ReganBooks) is a New York Times best-seller. He followed it up with My Secret: A PostSecret Book, The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book, and his most recent, A Lifetime of Secrets. In 2006, his PostSecret website (which receives over 3,000,000 visitors every month) was awarded six weblog awards including Best American Blog and Blog of the Year. His traveling exhibition of PostSecret cards was called by the Washington Post, "One of the five best art shows in 2005."

Warren was born in Arizona and went to high school in Illinois. He later graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in social science and moved to the Washington, DC area to start a business.

Warren has appeared on the Today Show, 20/20, CNN, MSNBC, CBC, NPR, and Fox News. USA Today called Warren, "An award-winning blogger, a first-time author, an artist with a traveling exhibit, a possible documentary subject, the inspiration for a music video and the all-around media "it" boy of the moment." In 2009, Forbes magazine listed him as the number four most popular "web celeb," behind celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, tech blogger Michael Arrington, and Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com.

In 2005, The All American Rejects approached Warren about using images of actual PostSecret images in their Dirty Little Secret music video. They offered Warren $1,000 but instead he asked them to donate $2,000 to 1(800)SUICIDE where Warren is a volunteer. The donation was made and the music video became one of the most requested on MTV.

Warren continues to receive between 100 and 200 postcards everyday. He updates his website on Sundays and is working to produce four more PostSecret books. Warren, his wife and his daughter call Germantown, Maryland home. He continues to call himself an "accidental artist" because he has no artist background or training. "I have been asked many times why I started this. It still feels to me as though this project found me. All I try to do is make the right decisions every day to protect the integrity of the project - and learn to trust the journey.

There will be a book sale and signing to follow.

Visit his website at: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

This lecture made possible by Cassandra S. Foens, M.D., F.A.C.R..