TALES FROM A NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA, with Tom Flynn (CFI)
Closing event in CFI's first anniversary celebration series
SUMMARY
Tom Flynn, editor of FREE INQUIRY and longtime freethought activist, talks about the challenges he faced -- and some of the surprising things he learned -- during his five years editing THE NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UNBELIEF. This all-new, just-under-900-page tome has been hailed as the new standard reference in its field. It covers in unprecedented detail the freethought, atheist, and humanist traditions across the world, country by country. Flynn invited, coordinated, and cajoled more than 150 contributors who wrote well over 500 separate entries. The process wasn't always straightforward. In particular, bringing together the entries covering freethought in Canada involved marshaling new scholarship from some surprising sources. Along the way, researchers unearthed a once-vibrant, long-forgotten freethought tradition in Toronto with unexpected links to some of the biggest names in Golden Age freethought. Flynn will profile some of these new discoveries, and share stories about his "every editor's nightmare" experiences. What do you do when a prolific contributor dies before correcting his proofs? How do you motivate an author who's agreed to write more than a dozen entries,
but never starts writing? Flynn will reveal all with his trademark good humor.
BIOGRAPHY
A frequent speaker all across southern Ontario, Tom Flynn is editor of FREE INQUIRY, director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum, and a founding co-editor of the newsletter SECULAR HUMANIST BULLETIN. He edited THE NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UNBELIEF, published by Prometheus Books late in 2007. His previous books include the irreverent science fiction novels GALACTIC RAPTURE and NOTHING SACRED and the rollicking polemic THE TROUBLE WITH CHRISTMAS, all published by Prometheus.
Cost: $5 general, $4 students, FREE for Friends of the Centre
