YourFry targets ‘tech heads’

Penguin Random House and author Stephen Fry are launching a “global digital storytelling project where text and technology meet”, which will “ask questions about the nature of how we create and publish autobiography in the digital environment”.

YourFry will challenge people to reinterpret Fry’s new memoir, More Fool Me (Michael Joseph), in any language or form, including text, data visualisation, app, audio and 3D modelling. Samples of text, audio and more, from More Fool Me and Fry’s previous memoir The Fry Chronicles (Penguin), are available for download from www.yourfry.com for use in project submissions.

YourFry will preview at the V&A Museum in London this weekend (21st September) as part of Digital Design Week, before launching on 25th September, the publication date for More Fool Me. The submissions deadline is 1st December, and Fry will help judge the entries.

Nathan Hull, PRH’s digital product development director, said: “YourFry is brave and collaborative. It is taking Stephen Fry and his memoir to a very relevant market of tech heads, creatives and entrepreneurs the world over, where the traditional elements of a book’s PR, sales and marketing might not necessarily reach. I’m convinced some ideas submitted to this project will change the way we as an industry view ‘the story’. Habits, trends and desires evolve and so should our capacity as publishers to help our authors tell stories, so we need to be prepared to gain understanding and inspiration from brave leaps like this.”

PRH will continue its partnership with filesharing site WeTransfer, which will carry videos about the challenge. A series of YourFry events are being planned “in every continent”, with confirmed locations including Columbia University in New York and Toronto Public Library in Canada.

In 2010, PRH and Fry created the MyFry app, which enabled readers to explore The Fry Chronicles in a non-linear fashion.