Just Do It

Frank Warren

by Mickey Jou

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Published: Apr 10, 2007

Thu., April 12, 8 p.m., free, Campus Center Main Lounge, Rutgers University-Camden, Third and Cooper streets, Camden, N.J., 856-225-6161, www.postsecret.com

Who says secrets are no fun? Frank Warren, the founder of PostSecret.com — a popular blog that lets people air their dirtiest laundry — makes his living by sharing other people's never-before-told tales. All you have to do is mail Warren your confession on a postcard. "It's a community of secrets," says Warren, who started the project in 2004 by delivering 3,000 postcards, each requesting that the recipient tell him a secret. "There's a conversation between the secrets and the senders. The cards connect and bounce off one another."

Picking the best from the 30,000 postcards he's since received — each one personalized with scribbles, sketches and scrapbooklike art — Warren's published three books, and posts new secrets online every Sunday. (A sampling of secrets: "I am so grateful to the psychiatrist I saw when I was 19, who told me I would be fine again. He saved my life"; "I'm a vegetarian but frequently dream of eating chicken nuggets"; and "I said I miscarried, but I was never pregnant.")

At tonight's talk, Warren promises to divulge his "secret secrets" (the ones censored out of the books for copyright reasons), and show some of the original postcards that started the project.

With more than 100 secrets arriving at his Maryland home every day, plus the spontaneous sharing that happens at PostSecret events, you gotta wonder: Does Warren ever tire of hearing about strangers' hopes, fears and deviant desires. "I don't think you can ever receive too much mail," says Warren. "[Especially when you're] searching for some impossibly perfect secret."

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