There’s something about secrets. Everyone has them, but not everyone reveals them, and everyone’s secret is a little bit different.
Artist Frank Warren recognized that when, three years ago, he created PostSecret, an art experiment that has become a pop culture phenomenon. This phenomenon is a collection of anonymous secrets, written on postcards in creative ways, that have been sent to Warren from people across the globe.
It started in 2004 as an art exhibit in Washington, D.C., but the PostSecret project has now expanded into a weekly blog and four books, and Warren said it grew out of his own fascination with the secrecy of human lives.
“I think I’ve always had this fascination with secrets. People live these rich, interior lives that they don’t always get to share,” said Warren, whose goal was to create a safe place where people could anonymously reveal their secrets.
For Warren, postcards were a perfect way to do that.
“I’ve always had this connection with postcards,” he said. “Postcards have always had this magic to them.”
This magic stemmed from a childhood experience of Warren’s. While at camp, he sent a postcard home to his parents, and it didn’t arrive until after he had returned home. It was like a message from his past self, and since then he has been fascinated by the little pieces of paper that “travel through the mail exposed.”
So, he asked people to put their secrets on postcards and anonymously mail them to him. There was only one requirement: Be creative.
The response has been massive. Warren receives about 1,000 secrets a week, and in the three years since he started the project, Warren has

collected more than 165,000 secrets from around the world. Each week, only 20 of those secrets make it onto the PostSecret blog.
“I take the secrets I find surprising, secrets I haven’t seen before (and put them on the blog). I get a large variety of different kinds of secrets,” he said.
The secrets Warren doesn’t post either end up staying with him at home, or they end up in his books or his traveling PostSecret exhibitions.
In all its forms, PostSecret has been extremely successful, and Warren tries to use that success to help people. Since 2004, Warren says the project has donated about $100,000 to helplines like 1.800.SUICIDE, a national suicide prevention hotline.
Some of the secrets even ended up in the All American Rejects’ video for “Dirty Little Secret,” but instead of taking payment for the secrets, Warren asked that the video’s director make a contribution to the suicide prevention hotline.
“I was very pleased with the results,” Warren said. “It raised awareness about the project among youth.”
This week, Warren released his fourth book of secrets, titled “A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book.” It is full of never-before-seen secrets from people ranging from as young as eight years old to 80.
“(The book) demonstrates the surprising way our secrets change over time, but also the way they stay the same,” he said. “I like to think of this book as a biography – a biography about us as told by our secrets.”
The secrets in the book include those of Warren himself. Every PostSecret book contains one of Warren’s secrets, which he sees as a way to bring him closer to the project.
“I think when you read these secrets, it really puts you in touch with a sense of authenticity, truth in our lives. I think…people are in search of ways to find more authentic lives.”
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