I’m more than a little surprised to find myself in this box: my idea of NEWS is something that happened in 1848, and I think there are better things to advertise and take notice of than my tiny doings or scribbles.

But now that DDB Singapore has brought me into the 20th century – with every sign of coaxing me into the 21st – I’m happy to welcome anyone who’s interested to this space, where we may now and then post something that’s not easily found elsewhere, a video clip from our recent journeys or something that might be of interest to anyone who’s traveled as far as this unexpected corner.

Thank you for your time and attention, and if you’re irritated by something here, please blame the brilliant designers of these pages. Without them, I’d still be in some black hole!

If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:

October 3 Conversation with Philip Glass, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California
October 6 Public interview, Live Talks L.A., Santa Monica, California
October 7 Reading, Laguna Beach Books, Orange County, California
October 9 Reading, Book Passage, Corte Madera, California
October 10 Public interview by Dan Stone, City Arts and Lectures, San Francisco, California
October 12 Public interview, Southern Festival of Books, Nashville, Tennessee
October 14 Conversation, Asia Society, New York, New York
October 15 Conversation, McNally-Jackson Books, New York, New York
October 16 Reading, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
October 17 Reading, Japan Society Boston/Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 19 Reading, Politics & Prose, Washington D.C.
November 2-3 Singapore Writers’ Festival, Singapore
November 7-10 Hong Kong Literature Festival, Hong Kong
December 13-15 Times Lit Fest, Mumbai, India
January 9, 2020 Conversation with Elaine Pagels, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California
February 26 Public interview, Point Loma Nazarene U., San Diego, California
April 13-14 Talk, Chapman University, Orange, California
April 17 Conversation with Mohsin Hamid, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California
April, 2020 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Los Angeles, California
May 12 Conversation with Elizabeth Strout, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California
May 18 Conversation with Krista Tippett, City Arts & Lectures, San Francisco, California
June 4-8 Workshop with Abbess Furyu Schroeder, Tassajara, Carmel, California
August, 2020 Mountain Echoes Festival, Thimphu, Bhutan
September Reading/Lecture, Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta
October 3-10 Montgomery Fellow Lecture, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire
November, 2020 Jaipur Literary Festival in Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Many more engagements are currently in the works.

“Japan still inhabits its own ancestral universe”–An essay on Japan for TIME magazine, April 22, 2019

“With New Emperor, Japan Enters the Era of `Joyful Harmony’ “—An Op-Ed on the ascent of a new Emperor in Japan, World Post, Berggruen Institute—April 26, 2019

“The beautiful art-filled Japanese islands left behind by the modern world”—An essay on Naoshima and Teshima for the Daily Telegraph, April 28, 2019

“Does California’s commitment to happiness end up leaving us bereft”—An Op-Ed piece on California and Japan for the Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2019

“The Best of Who We Are”–A long essay on the Dalai Lama on the occasion of his 84th birthday for Lion’s Roar, July 2019

Introduction to “Pyongyang: Model City”—The preface to a book about the architecture of North Korea’s showpiece capital, published by Thames & Hudson in London, July 2019

This Could be Home—a short book-length essay on Raffles Hotel and Singapore for Epigram Books in Singapore and London, July 2019. Excerpted in Air-Mail, August 3, 2019.

“What Ping-Pong taught me about life”—the opening talk at the second TED Summit, on July 21, 2019, in Edinburgh, posted on TED.com on August 23, 2019.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations: a new book from Alfred A. Knopf in New York and Toronto, Bloomsbury in London and Penguin India in New Delhi, September 2019

“How To Travel”—a short film made for CNN’s Great Big Story series, airing on September 15, 2019.

Inventory—an interview with the Financial Times magazine, September 6, 2019

“The Beauty of the Ordinary”—an Op-Ed essay in The New York Times on the coming of autumn, September 22, 2019

“Rituals of the Fast-Moving World”—a long essay on rituals in the age of cross-planetary movement, for En Route, October 2019

“Archaeology of the Future”–an essay on Hiroshi Sugimoto for the White Light Festival in New York, October 2019

“Stillness”—a long interview in the magazine Shawati, October 2019.

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