Author Margaret Atwood and 'Wired' Chris Anderson headline three-day symposium, June 9-12.

The past decade has brought texting, tweeting, e-readers, Google Books and digital libraries into a parallel universe with the millennia-old medium of the printed word. What will survive?

The art of reading in flux is the focus of Rochester Institute of Technology's Future of Reading Symposium, which will be held from June 9-12 across the university campus. Keynote speakers are Margaret Atwood, award-winning author of more than 40 books, and Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. The event is co-sponsored by RIT School of Print Media and RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, and will feature presentations by experts in writing systems, content creation, vision and cognition, typography, visual media and display technology.

"Reading in an integral part of our everyday lives and has a profound effect on how societies envision, articulate, distribute, absorb, remember and assimilate content," says David Pankow, curator of RIT's Cary Graphic Arts Collection. "The aim of the conference is to foresee where new modes of reading will take us. Will technology and new media spell the end of traditional reading?"

The Future of Reading Symposium will offer point-counterpoints focusing on three central themes: Reading and Writing, Media and Technology, and Science and the Art of Literacy. Notable guest speakers include Johanna Drucker of UCLA Information Studies, Amit Ray of RIT Literary and Cultural Studies, N. Katherine Hayles of Duke University, Denis Pelli of New York University, Kris Holmes of Bigelow & Holmes typography, and author and linguist Robert Bringhurst.

The symposium is expected to attract 500 national and international participants in the fields of publishing, graphic design and typography, digital humanities, library science and media technology. For more information visit http://futureofreading.cias.rit.edu/ or contact Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, assistant curator, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, at (585) 475-4213 or [email protected].