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!

“Leonard Cohen burns, and we burn with him,” a 10-page meditation on the Zen singer-songwriter in Shambhala Sun magazine (April 2013);

“Terrence Malick’s Song of Songs”–an appraisal of To the Wonder for Harpers.com, April 22, 2013;

“Reading My Way to the Threshold of the Great Unanswerable”–a discussion with Patrick McMahon in Inquiring Mind magazine, Spring 2013;

“Onstage and Off”–an introduction to Christopher Isherwood’s The Condor and the Crows (published by Vintage U.K., May 2013);

“Cuban Evolution,” a 16-page spread on the island today in Time, July 8, 2013;

“Taking Nothing for Granted: A Tribute to Donald Richie”–International House of Japan Bulletin, Summer 2013;

(with Geoff Dyer), “Ping Pong,” with photographs from the Little Brown Mushroom Library, a limited edition book to be published by Alec Soth in September 2013.

“Maruyama Park,” an essay on Kyoto’s central green space in the book, City Parks, edited by Catie Marron and published by Harper Collins, in October 2013;

“The Classroom of the Real,” an essay on Boston in Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They Love, a commemoration of the American city six months after the Boston Marathon bombing, published by Harcourt Houghton Mifflin in October 2013;

“The Leap of Ecstasy”–an essay for the 2013 White Nights Festival Playbill, Lincoln Center, New York City, October 2013;

“The Lure of Hidden Treasure”–an introduction to the 1926 Indochina travel-book, King Cobra, by Harry Hervey, to be published by DatAsia in November 2013;

“The Book that Launched a Thousand Ships”–an introduction to the 1927 novel, Congai, by Harry Hervey, to be published by DatAsia in November 2013.

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

September 10 Altman Fellow Talk on Globalization, Miami University, Miami, Ohio
September 12 Reading as Visiting Writer, St. Lawrence University Canton, New York
October 8 Conversation with Katherine Boo, UCSB Arts & Lectures Santa Barbara, California
October 9 Conversation with Katherine Boo, L.A. Central Library Los Angeles, California
October 29 Adventure Travel Trade Association Summit Keynote Walvis Bay, Namibia
November 10-14 Presidential Speaker Series, Yale-NUS Singapore
April 3, 2014 Lecture on Home, Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
April 2014 Conversation with Douglas Coupland, Broad Museum Los Angeles, California
January 2015 KeyWest Literary Seminar: “Literature and the Spirit” Key West, Florida

Many more engagements are currently in the works.

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