Future Library to release Atwood's work in 100 years

Margaret Atwood has become the first writer to submit work for art project the Future Library, which will see her manuscript released in a 100 years' time.

Man Booker Prize-winner Atwood is the first of 100 writers who will submit a new manuscript for the project, with one being entered each year.

Devised by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, the project is based in Norway, where the city of Oslo has gifted a patch of woodland near the city to the Future Library Trust. Paterson has planted 1,000 trees there, which will grow for 100 years before being cut down and turned into paper to print an anthology of all the books which have been submitted over the century.

The manuscripts themselves will be held in trust in a specially designed room in the Deichmanske Public Library, which is opening in 2018 in Bjørvika, Oslo. The room, lined with wood from the forest, will record the writer's name and the title of the work, but the manuscripts themselves will remain hidden until 2114.

Atwood will hand over the text in 2015. She said: "I am very honoured, and also happy to be part of this endeavour. This project, at least, believes the human race will still be around in a hundred years! Future Library is bound to attract a lot of attention over the decades, as people follow the progress of the trees, note what takes up residence in and around them, and try to guess what the writers have put into their sealed boxes."