Cathy Perfect
Kern Valley Sun

The 100-year-old California Writers Club invites everyone to submit predictions on the future of print media, for inclusion in a time capsule to be opened in 2035 on the occasion of Mark Twain’s bicentennial.

What will we be reading in 2035? Will we still have conventional newspapers, magazines and books? Will we still have e-books, or will something have come along to replace them? What impact will state-of-the-art technology have on news reporting? On fiction and nonfiction? Short stories and poems? Reference works and other resources? Memoirs and love letters? What collateral effect will it have on the various aspects of daily life? “It seems hard to believe, but that year will just about mark the mid-century point for the Internet,” said California Writers Club president Casey Wilson. “This isn’t a contest. We’re not holding our breath for deathless prose. We just want to collect people’s thoughts now and, in 2035, see how accurately they predicted what it would actually be like.”

The CWC will receive submissions through Aug. 25, 2010 (174th birthday of Bret Harte, one of California’s first great storytellers). Anyone interested in participating should mail his or her essay to California Writers Club, P.O. Box 484, Ridgecrest, CA 93556, and include the author’s name, age, address, and permission to publish all or part of the essay when the capsule is opened.

California had only been a state for about 50 years when Jack London and some of his friends started their informal get-togethers. These gatherings became the California Writers Club, the oldest professional writing organization in the West. Today the CWC has more than 1,200 members in 18 branches throughout the state. The organization encourages everyone to check www.calwriters.org periodically for membership information and updates on branch and centennial activities.