Pico Iyer’s 15 books, translated into 23 languages, have made him “arguably the greatest living travel writer,” according to Outside magazine. They address everything from the Cuban Revolution to Sufi mysticism, from Los Angeles Airport to the XIVth Dalai Lama. But he has also written screenplays, liner-notes for Leonard Cohen and the introductions to more than seventy other works, including many books by some of the distinguished photographers of our time (from Alex and Rebecca Webb to Lynn Davis and from Isamu Noguchi to Steve McCurry). He is a constant contributor to The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Conde Nast Traveler and Aperture, publishing up to 100 articles a year since 1982.

Pico has also given four talks for TED, which have received more than 11 million views so far, and was the author of the second TED Book, The Art of Stillness. A regular speaker from Bogota to Shanghai, he has been featured in program-length interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Krista Tippett and Larry King and on such television stations as CNN, Channel News Asia and NHK World.

Born and raised in England, he has been based since 1987 in Western Japan. In 2019 he was Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, Guest Director of the Telluride Film Festival and the first official writer-in-residence at Raffles Hotel in Singapore.