Fruitful discussions after several AEI events suggested that conservatives should turn their creativity more fully toward fiction, poetry, drama, and literary and cultural criticisms. At AEI, a number of persons keenly interested in the arts have taken up this challenge on their own, with AEI's generous contribution of the occasional use of a meeting room. Auspiciously, the cultural program was inaugurated in 2002 by an evening reading featuring Joseph (Jody) Bottum's The Fall and Other Poems. In the next meeting, Danielle Crittenden read from her hilarious forthcoming novel (earlier serialized at OpinionJournal.com), Amanda.Bright@Home. Both of these readings generated enthusiastic and delighted audiences. The idea had caught on.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the career of P. G. Wodehouse, one of the wittiest writers and greatest English stylists of the twentieth century, AEI will bring together several Wodehouse devotees who will read from three of the master's short stories and lead a brief inquiry into his creative genius and remarkable skill with words.