2022-03-11 15:23
My book, Hello, Stranger has just been published in Korean. The Korean title is 타인이라는 가능성, which I'm told translates as “The Pos… Read More
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Will Buckingham Writer's Blog
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News and updates from writer, philosopher and educator, Will Buckingham.
2022-02-22 13:38
It's a decade since my children's book The Snorgh and the Sailor was first published. Since then, it has gone on to be a firm favourite among readers, been translated into Turkish, Finnish K… Read More
2022-02-15 15:05
Come and join me in conversation with Roxani Krystalli, at Paisley Book Festival this 22nd February. We'll be talking about the trouble with strangers, about connecting and reconnecting, and… Read More
2022-02-12 20:35
Over the past few months, along with my Wind&Bones collaborator and co-director, Dr Hannah Stevens, I've been working on a project in collaboration with the Bulgarian NGO, Emprove.We've… Read More
2022-02-11 12:32
I'm really pleased to announce that my book Lucy and the Rocket Dog, illustrated by the brilliant Monica Arnaldo, is forthcoming in French as Lucy et le chien de l'espace, translated by Herm… Read More
2021-10-21 16:21
I'm a huge fan of Isabelle Roughol's Borderline, a podcast for defiant global citizens. So it was a pleasure to catch up with her for a free-ranging chat about my book Hello, Stranger; How W… Read More
2021-10-21 15:58
I was delighted to be invited by the Birmingham literature festival to interview Sarfraz Manzoor about his challenging, insightful and hopeful book, They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wr… Read More
2021-09-01 10:00
Is it that time already? Where has the last month gone? Anyway, as it is now September 1st, it's time for another Wayward Things newsletter. Welcome on board to anybody who has signed up rec… Read More
2021-08-10 13:09
Just a quick post this, to let you know that Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World is going to be on Radio4's Book of the Week from the 16th to the 20th of August!… Read More
2021-08-01 10:00
Hello! Welcome to my latest Wayward Things newsletter. I'm writing this from Ano Poli, the old upper town in Thessaloniki. We're staying in a quiet square, just next to the tomb of the 16th… Read More
2021-07-26 10:00
This piece was first published in the journal Museum & Society back in 2018. I'm republishing it here to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Elee's death. There is a tuna skeleton in… Read More
2021-07-20 12:18
"An elegant and moving exploration of what it means to connect with strangers turns into an elegy for a much-missed way of life..."I was very pleased to get this review of Hello, Stranger in… Read More
2021-07-19 08:19
I've just been asked to by Shepherd.com—the new site for book recommendations—to recommend five books about hospitality and the art of living alongside strangers. My picks range… Read More
2021-07-02 06:31
A quick post to say that my book Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World is now out there in the world. It's about the complexity of our relationships with strangers… Read More
2021-07-01 09:15
Hello, strangers and friends, and welcome to this edition of the Wayward Things newsletter.Today is a hugely exciting day for me, as it is publication day for my book, Hello Stranger: How We… Read More
2021-06-22 11:48
Last week, I was privileged to be invited to the Goethe Institut in Sofia, Bulgaria, to run a workshop for refugee writers via my project Wind&Bones, in collaboration with Caritas Sofia… Read More
2021-06-11 15:32
There have been some changes recently over on my philosophy project, Looking for Wisdom, not least of which is my decision to commission some new artwork from the brilliant Bulgarian illustr… Read More
2021-06-01 10:00
Hello, Welcome to the lucky thirteenth edition of my newsletter, Will Buckingham's Wayward Things. You'll see straight away that this newsletter has a new format. I've recently updated my we… Read More
2021-05-26 14:57
The other week, the brilliant travel writer Tim Hannigan interviewed me and my Wind&Bones comrade Dr Hannah Stevens for the Dublin City University Credne creativity podcast.It was a grea… Read More
2021-05-21 07:08
The last year has been a strange one for travel-writing, and so I was delighted to be invited to contribute a chapter to this intriguing new collection edited by David Robinson and Gary Fish… Read More
2021-05-16 18:13
After more than a decade, I've decided to retire my old WordPress website, and give things a refresh over here. So, I've put my WordPress days behind me, and this all-new site is running on… Read More
2021-05-13 11:07
A Poem about ageing and loss, written by one of China’s greatest women poets, Li Qingzhao It is the loveliest ... Read more
Source Read More
2021-05-13 06:16
A couple of weeks back, Granta sent me the finalised cover for my next book, Hello, Stranger: How We Find ... Read more
Source Read More
2021-04-19 10:39
It is a story where nothing happens. Nothing other than waiting, and hope, and friendship, and the fear of living in a world we only partly understand, and a sense that life could be somehow… Read More
2021-04-03 10:48
I have spent most of the last two decades teaching the art of writing. And over the years, one thing I have encountered again and again is the myth that creativity necessarily entails suffer… Read More
2021-03-05 18:05
Hello,It's a sunny spring morning here in Sofia, Bulgaria. Outside the window in the square, a busker is playing the kaval, the Bulgarian flute. And it definitely feels like winter is finall… Read More
2021-03-05 06:42
The other day, I took a break from my writing desk and went into the kitchen to make bread. There’s something therapeutic about the process of mixing flour and yeast and water, combini… Read More
2021-03-01 11:00
It’s the beginning of March, and here in the northern hemisphere spring is springing. So what better time to launch ... Read moreLet’s Do It: A Course on the Philosophy of Love
S… Read More
2021-02-23 10:34
This post was first published over on Blank Page in February 2021.
Several years ago, I attended a talk by the Canadian poet Erín Moure. She talked about poetry and translation and… Read More
2021-02-22 13:06
This piece was first published on Blank Page on Feb 22nd 2021.
Several years ago, I taught a university course called Professional Writing Skills. I loved teaching the course because it ex… Read More
2021-02-02 09:43
I woke up yesterday to the terrible news about the coup in Myanmar, so I wrote this piece over on ... Read moreA Love Letter for Myanmar Read More
2020-12-31 11:47
On January 4th, I’ll be launching my first philosophy course via my new project, Looking for Wisdom. You can find ... Read moreLooking for Wisdom: New Philosophy Courses Read More
2020-12-02 14:12
One of the fun things over the past month or so has been that I’ve been spending more time writing, ... Read morePhilosophers and Other Beasts Read More
2020-11-11 15:55
Yesterday, I launched Looking for Wisdom, my new philosophy project, and I’m delighted to already have a load of people ... Read moreLooking for Wisdom? Read More
2020-11-05 12:22
I’ve had a new piece published on the BBC Travel website about the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, and the subtle ... Read moreBBC Travel piece on Plovdiv and the art of making space Read More
2020-10-11 11:22
Dr. Elee Kirk’s research on children, photography and natural history museums was a thing of beauty. Elee was a natural ... Read moreSnapshots of Museum Experience: Forthcoming in Kore… Read More
2020-09-13 06:53
For all you philosophers out there, I’ve now made my three month introductory philosophy course freely available on Soundcloud. The ... Read morePhilosophy: the arts of living, now on… Read More
2020-08-17 15:22
I’m really excited to be working alongside my Wind&Bones collaborator Hannah Stevens, and the brilliant team at Flatwyse, to offer ... Read moreCreative Nonfiction Course on Flatwy… Read More
2020-08-17 08:06
Over the past few months, I’ve been working as consultant editor for Dorling Kindersley, on their forthcoming Philosophy: A Visual ... Read morePhilosophy, a Visual Encyclopedia Read More
2020-08-15 14:48
It’s been a busy few weeks, putting the finishing touches to my next book, Hello, Stranger: Stories of Connection in ... Read moreMentoring with Wind&Bones Read More
2020-06-08 08:33
This week, I’ve started a new, and incredibly fun project: a pod-class called “Philosophy: The Arts of Living”, thanks to ... Read moreNew Pod-Class on Philosophy: The Arts… Read More
2020-05-05 11:30
Last November, I moved to Sofia in Bulgaria for work. For the first few months, I made friends and connections, ... Read moreCOVID–19: No Time For Politics? Read More
2020-02-14 13:04
This week, with Wind&Bones, I embarked upon a new venture here in Sofia: a weekly café for writers and activists, which we’re running in collaboration with Greenpeace, Bulga… Read More
2020-01-20 09:07
Some months ago — in that strange, hushed lull after finishing the manuscript of one book, and starting to think about another — I sat down to write. I fired up my laptop. I flip… Read More
2020-01-15 17:28
At the age of eighteen, I travelled to Pakistan, where I spent nine months, teaching in a school and then travelling the country alone. And my most enduring memory of Pakistan is the extraor… Read More
2020-01-06 09:53
I’ve got a new course starting here in Sofia this January, as a part of the Wind&Bones project that I co-direct. From January, alongside the nonfiction, memoir and life-writing cou… Read More
2019-12-03 13:33
A few days after arriving here in Sofia, I was invited to the recent China/Bulgaria conference organised by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where I gave a reading from my Sixty-Four Chanc… Read More
2019-11-22 10:00
Now that we have properly landed in Bulgaria, things are getting busy. As a part of the Wind&Bones project that I run with my collaborator Dr. Hannah Stevens, I am working with the Acade… Read More
2019-11-13 07:41
Myanmar’s new capital city of Nay Pyi Taw is a strange, half-deserted place. A city of wide spaces occupied by few people, and of vast highways without any traffic. Look it up online… Read More
2019-11-13 00:00
This piece was first published on BBC Travel in November 2019.
Captain Aung Khant, of the Burmese army, leaned back in his pink plastic chair. He was a handsome man in his 40s with a relax… Read More
2019-11-08 13:01
Last week, I was in Plovdiv, Bulgaria for the EmpathEAST 2019 forum for empathy-driven social change. Run by the wonderful Bulgarian organisation Ideas Factory / Фабр… Read More
2019-11-07 00:00
Of all the things that Ernest Hemingway never said, one of the most widely shared must be this: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’Th… Read More
2019-10-31 15:14
I’m very happy to have a piece out in the Southeast Asia Globe on witchcraft, gentrification and problem with foreigners in Yangon, Maymar. The piece is about our sometimes troubled re… Read More
2019-10-15 07:14
Next week, along with my Wind&Bones collaborator Dr. Hannah Stevens, I’ll be running a creative writing workshop in conjunction with the brilliant Refugee Trauma Initiative here in… Read More
2019-10-04 13:08
Can it be a decade since the publication of my philosophy book, Finding Our Sea-Legs: Ethics Experience and the Ocean of Stories? The book first came out in 2009 from Kingston Universit… Read More
2019-09-21 00:00
Of all philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most exhilarating to read. He is fragmentary, breathless, maddening, sometimes insightful, sometimes obscure, often funny, sometimes ap… Read More
2019-09-15 06:34
I love train journeys. I love them for the opportunity they give for life to establish a different rhythm. Over the last few days, I’ve been taking slow trains from Thessaloniki to Sof… Read More
2019-09-10 15:07
For the last few months, I’ve been based in Thessaloniki, where I’ve been working on my book for Granta, Hello Stranger: stories of connection in a divided world. It’s been… Read More
2019-09-06 05:35
My new course on the philosophy of happiness has just been published on Highbrow. I really like Highbrow and their ethos. They deliver daily bite-sized lessons to email inboxes around the wo… Read More
2019-08-08 17:03
The lovely people at Icon Books have just been in touch to say that my book A Practical Guide to Happiness: Think Deeply and Flourish is coming out in Chinese translation. It will be publish… Read More
2019-07-06 14:19
Yesterday, having got to a knotty bit in the manuscript of my Hello Stranger book, I went out to a café here in Thessaloniki. I took my laptop with me. For most of the morning, a… Read More
2019-06-17 07:30
Almost fifteen years ago now, I started up my first blog. At the time, I was grappling with questions of Buddhist thought and practice, and so I set up a blog called thinkBuddha. I saw the b… Read More
2019-06-09 12:44
When I came back to Myanmar seven months ago, I decided to dedicate myself to improving my language skills. When friends asked me why I wanted to improve my Burmese, I told them th… Read More
2019-06-06 09:55
Starting next month, I’m going to be trying an experiment: I’m launching a newsletter. This is part of my current rethink about how I spend time writing online. Over the past few… Read More
2019-05-06 15:39
Here in Myanmar, the rains have begun, and in a few weeks’ time, the rainy season will be in full swing. Some time in June, I’ll be heading off to Greece to escape the worst of t… Read More
2019-05-01 04:02
Quite a few months back, I did some work for Dorling Kindersley advising on the content for their new book Philosophers: Their Lives and Works. Whilst I was at it, I also contributed a few c… Read More
2019-04-27 03:12
Stealing With the Eyes has just been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by poet, musicologist and Balinese gamelan expert Kate Wakeling. If you are a subscriber, you can find the… Read More
2019-04-24 11:43
I’m delighted to have a piece out in German in the forthcoming Kosmopolis 35 – Interkulturelle Zeitschrift aus Berlin. It is an essay about my book Stealing With the Eyes. T… Read More
2019-04-02 07:05
Whilst in Taiwan later in April, I’m delighted to be at National Dong Hwa University (國立東華大學) in Hualien, where Hannah Stevens and I will be g… Read More
2019-04-01 07:02
This evening I fly to Singapore and then to Taiwan. I’m looking forward to brushing off my rusty Chinese. But after the Thingyan festival in Myanmar is over, I’m going to be back… Read More
2019-03-17 13:50
The last few weeks have been busy with the Wind&Bones project that I co-run. We’re coming to the end of our current course as writers in residence at the Parami Institute in Yangon… Read More
2019-03-05 09:59
As a job, it has been long overdue…. For years now, I have run multiple websites, a small online empire that over the years has mushroomed until it has reached unmanageable proportion… Read More
2019-03-03 14:36
Here in Yangon, our creative writing classes are in full swing, and it’s a lot of fun; but I’m also aware that back in the UK things are gearing up for the London Book Fair, and… Read More
2019-02-10 14:06
One of the biggest delights of being in Bali at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in 2018 was talking to Rudolf Gilmore Perez from Manusia Magazine. It was an enormously stimulating inte… Read More
2019-01-23 06:52
I’m very pleased to have just signed a contract on the audio rights for my little guide to philosophies of happiness, A Practical Guide to Happiness : Think Deeply and Flourish, p… Read More
2019-01-11 02:53
I’m very pleased to announce that Granta have acquired my forthcoming non-fiction book, Hello, Stranger, an exploration of how welcoming strangers into our lives and worlds may make th… Read More
2019-01-06 06:46
Over the next few months, I’m going to be working on co-developing a module on ethical leadership for Mote Oo Education. I’ll be working alongside Dr. Hannah Stevens, under the b… Read More
2018-12-29 02:52
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on some consultancy for Dorling Kindersley, advising on content for their forthcoming book Philosophers: Their Lives & Works (as we… Read More
2018-12-16 09:27
Over the past few weeks, I have been hard at work on my Burmese language. I am feeling like I am beginning to make progress, and so I have moved on from textbooks to some basic r… Read More
2018-12-01 11:39
It’s been three or four weeks since arriving in Yangon, and it’s been a surprisingly busy time. There’s a lot going on with the Wind&Bones project that I run along with… Read More
2018-11-27 07:57
So, there I am in the middle of my Burmese language lesson, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of something streaking across the kitchen floor. And it is then I reali… Read More
2018-11-25 09:19
The festival of Tazaungdaing (တန်ဆောင်တိုင်) is drawing to a close, and things in our neighbourhood… Read More
2018-11-23 10:11
I’ve just had a piece published in the academic journal Museum & Society, which has a special issue in honour of the late Elee Kirk. The piece is called “Elee Kirk: Snapshots… Read More
2018-11-21 10:10
I’m very pleased to have a new occasional philosophy column in Aquila magazine, “the ultimate intelligent read for inquisitive kids.” It’s going to be a lot of fun to… Read More
2018-11-08 11:04
2018-11-07 04:10
For the coming months, I’m back in Myanmar, where as well as upgrading my rusty Burmese and working on the next book project, I’ll be running a number of projects along with Hann… Read More
2018-10-29 03:27
2018-10-25 01:27
The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival kicked off last night, so over the next few days I’m going to be busy. Here’s a list of what I’m up to.
Thursday 25th October 6.15pm:… Read More
2018-10-17 05:24
I’m currently deep into The Malay Archipelago by Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. I’ve been aware of Wallace – in particular his travels in Maluku – f… Read More
2018-08-30 10:36
This is for all of you lovers of odd tales, Oulipians, wannabe diviners and China buffs out there. I’m very pleased to be doing an event on the I Ching for writers at the Nottingham Wr… Read More
2018-08-24 20:09
The Helsinki Book Review has just posted a very thoughtful and generous review of Stealing With the Eyes. Here’s an extractː
Moving in the realms of personal travelogue and the no… Read More
2018-08-17 14:14
I’m extremely excited that after almost a quarter of a century, I’ll be heading back to Indonesia this October, this time to the Ubud Writers and Readers festival, where I’… Read More
2018-08-11 15:21
There’s a very thoughtful write-up on my latest book, Stealing With the Eyes, over on the blog of Dr. Alex Woodall. Here’s an extract:
It is an absolute joy to read. It made me l… Read More
2018-08-09 15:20
I’m currently in Bulgaria with my fellow Wind&Bones writer, Hannah Stevens, where we’re running some workshops in Varna with the LECTI (Language Education Culture Tolerance I… Read More
2018-08-05 21:59
A couple of days ago, the lovely people at Aeon magazine re-shared my long essay on the Yijing or the Chinese Book of Changes, and since then I’ve had a few people getting in touc… Read More
2018-08-01 09:44
I’m very pleased to have an interview published in the Southeast Asia Globe, about anthropology, Indonesia, witchcraft, exoticism, writing and my book Stealing With the Eyes. Here&rsqu&hell…Read More
2018-07-24 08:42
One of my happiest memories of the Tanimbar islands, back in the mid 1990s, is the night I spent in the village of Alusi Krawain, dancing with my hosts to the sound of Tom Waits singing the… Read More
2018-07-18 15:08
Oh, crikey… it’s my big face splashed all over the internet. Or at least, all over the wonderful Outside Left website, who kindly offered to do an interview about my new book St… Read More
2018-07-15 14:30
Today is the official publication day for my travel memoir, Stealing With the Eyes: Imaginings and Incantations in Indonesia. I always feel both excited and a little apprehensive to see a ne… Read More
2018-07-08 09:49
A few months ago, without much fanfare, my fellow-writer Hannah Stevens and I launched a new project called Wind&Bones.
Wind&Bones (we nicked the name from medieval Chinese writer, L… Read More
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