The Curious Engineer

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Austin Kleon

austinkleon.com

My long-awaited followup to the Steal Like an Artist trilogy is in bookstores today!

Essays / personalGeneral

’15’20’25
Posts
391 from 29 Dec 2013 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (85 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://austinkleon.com/feed/

2026 75

  1. P S Y C H O ! (a mixtape)
  2. On nemeses
  3. Typewriter interview with Lisa Hanawalt
  4. On baseball
  5. Archival issues
  6. Are we a teardown or a fixer-upper?
  7. Typewriter interviews with Roz Chast and Paul Noth
  8. Inside the cartoon library
  9. Learning by drawing
  10. Typewriter interview with Roman Muradov
  11. The Bad Place
  12. Still summer (a mixtape)
  13. Typewriter interview with Esther Pearl Watson
  14. Summer misery
  15. New typewriter interviews with Adam Koford and Kevin Huizenga
  16. No urge to be doing
  17. Typewriter interview with George Saunders
  18. Fogust groove (a mixtape)
  19. Typewriter interview with Julia Rothman
  20. Inside the man…
  21. Typewriter interview with Erik Winkowski
  22. At the pool
  23. Typewriter interview with James Kochalka
  24. A sense of lightness
  25. A(nother) conversation with Beth Pickens
  26. Typewriter interview with Mark Haddon
  27. What happens when a character says the title of the movie
  28. A shortage of fun
  29. It’s very difficult to be very lazy
  30. Weep to water the trees (a mixtape)
  31. Typewriter interview with Vijay Gupta
  32. Typewriter interview with Jennifer Daniel
  33. Prince of Analogue
  34. In a (summer) funk (a mixtape)
  35. [Read more…]
  36. I shall be released! (a mixtape)
  37. Typewriter interview with Brad Neely
  38. Fledging season
  39. New zines: Not-knowing and Complexity
  40. A zine for Mother’s Day
  41. Don’t call it a book tour!
  42. Typewriter interview with David Epstein
  43. Snail mail
  44. The Gulp, cosmicomic perspective, and crazy sock day
  45. Typewriter interview with Tim Kreider
  46. Preorder goodies!
  47. Easter eggs
  48. Snow in April (a mixtape)
  49. Spring break in the desert
  50. The Beatles and introspection (or not)
  51. Typewriter interview with Marc Bell
  52. Craghead collages
  53. Solvable problems and unnecessary obstacles
  54. last month’s mixtape
  55. I like kid’s work more than work by real artists
  56. My next book: Don’t Call It Art!
  57. Typewriter interview with Tom Hart
  58. Permalink
  59. Everything has been saved from a wreck
  60. Love TKO (a February 2026 mixtape)
  61. Exquisite corpses
  62. The year is too young to be this long
  63. Tuesday trio
  64. About Time (a January 2026 mixtape)
  65. The best way to read the internet
  66. It’s all been done
  67. The wheel of the blog
  68. It doesn’t take much
  69. My reading year, 2025
  70. Typewriter interview with Tucker Nichols
  71. Typewriter interview with Elizabeth McCracken
  72. They haven’t got me yet, baby
  73. Lessons learned from movie night
  74. Happy new date stamp year to all who celebrate
  75. 100 things that made my year (2025)

2025 93

  1. Glad tidings
  2. Holiday gift guide
  3. Making art in a noisy world
  4. Typewriter, tip, tip, tip
  5. Tuesday Trio
  6. Little rooms
  7. Typewriter interview with Matthew Zapruder
  8. Scraps from my notebook
  9. A day too long (November 2025 mixtape)
  10. The job of teenagers
  11. The gathering of art
  12. Creativity and magic
  13. Ambition
  14. What I know about writing a newsletter
  15. Small things get big, big things get small
  16. The record store guy
  17. What I do when I finish a notebook
  18. No Fun! (a mixtape)
  19. The idea of autumn
  20. 20% off newsletter sale
  21. Typewriter interview with Kate Bingaman-Burt
  22. To your bliss stations!
  23. The one-hour studio
  24. New dumpsters, old fires
  25. Walk-ins welcome
  26. Typewriter interview with Sally Mann
  27. my love of boomer music
  28. Succulents
  29. Writing about editing
  30. Why our house is a library
  31. Exhausting routines
  32. The counterpoint of pictures and words
  33. Looking back a few seasons
  34. civilizations
  35. Drawing color blind
  36. Return to the island (a mixtape)
  37. Back from vacation
  38. You got up from your desk
  39. My 2025 (so far)
  40. Typewriter interview with Liana Finck
  41. last year’s “Chlorine” pool party mix
  42. Old books are time machines
  43. Typewriter interview with Laura Lippman
  44. Come on, world
  45. Solar return (a mixtape)
  46. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines
  47. The classics are weird
  48. Two recent conversations
  49. A peek inside my pocket notebook
  50. Typewriter interview with Sarah Manguso
  51. Writing shouldn’t be easier
  52. Gift ideas for dads & grads
  53. May 2025 mixtape
  54. Kubrick, Peep Show, and internal monologues
  55. April Showers
  56. Maycember rage
  57. 3 thoughts while pushing a wheelbarrow
  58. We’ll see
  59. Kids ask the darndest questions
  60. Disintegration
  61. Your next best friend
  62. The Inflatable Man
  63. On reading novels
  64. Easter Eggs
  65. Don’t crush Lamar!
  66. Nice News profile
  67. I can’t stop printing
  68. Interview with musician Walter Martin
  69. A Satisfied Mind
  70. Block printing and dub reggae
  71. New Orleans
  72. Death & Deadlines
  73. Daily Stoic interview with Ryan Holiday
  74. Bird bulletins
  75. Pointing at things
  76. Living seasonally
  77. Typewriter interview with Ross Gay
  78. What seems pointless
  79. Love zine
  80. Read like an Artist zine
  81. Soup lessons
  82. Love is Not a Gadget
  83. Motivational posters
  84. 7 questions I ask myself
  85. The cease-and-desist of winter
  86. 3 tricks for self-editing
  87. Love is a mixtape
  88. Nurturing Your Inner Child
  89. 100 quotes that helped me write
  90. Without hope and without despair
  91. my 4 notebooks
  92. 100 things that made my year (2024)
  93. What worked

2024 123

  1. Another year on the (note)books
  2. My reading year 2024
  3. Typewriter interview with Kelli Anderson
  4. Cover me comfort me (a December mixtape)
  5. my monthly mixtape project was complete
  6. Warren’s
  7. A complete unknown
  8. A zine about light
  9. Gift guide & 20% off subscriptions
  10. Souvenirs of gratitude
  11. Go into the studio and play
  12. Dancing in the Ruins
  13. Tacos with Chase Jarvis
  14. Everybody in the Place
  15. Room to think
  16. Don’t let your dreams give up on you
  17. Typewriter interview with Lynda Barry
  18. Against prognostication
  19. Interview with Dave Gray
  20. Keep Going is $1.99 on ebook
  21. Notebooks and memory
  22. Digging deep
  23. Just shy of a major deal
  24. A dip inside my commonplace diary
  25. A good day at the museum
  26. Name my new book truck
  27. Nothing from the outside will fill what’s missing on the inside
  28. The October Country
  29. typewriter interview
  30. The mind at 4 a.m.
  31. Getting in and out of trouble
  32. How do you draw time?
  33. A plan and not enough time
  34. the “Autumn Leaves” mixtape
  35. Human resources
  36. Cut out verbs
  37. American Heritage Dictionary
  38. Verbifying with Dylan
  39. Hands at work
  40. Collective creativity
  41. Shelves of diaries
  42. 30th printing
  43. Start here
  44. The notebook is where you figure out what’s going on
  45. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness
  46. To increase the variety of the created world
  47. Austin Public Library event with Franz Nicolay
  48. Another cactus surgery
  49. Newsletters should be letters
  50. Recently returned
  51. Typewriter interview with Elisa Gabbert
  52. Back to school
  53. The comfort of drawing Batman
  54. my Oahu mixtape
  55. Let me tell you about my vacation
  56. Book clubbing
  57. Donkey work
  58. Waste books
  59. Make Time Stop
  60. Signed books
  61. The finer things in life
  62. mess around with recall
  63. Writing is listening
  64. Listening is the whole deal
  65. Drawing Eno
  66. Notes on travel
  67. Four Tet on making music
  68. Firecracker
  69. 21st century books with pictures
  70. Midyear in a mid year
  71. Title matters
  72. Head, heart, and hands
  73. The way you wanted to feel
  74. Working titles
  75. My new stamp carousel
  76. summer 20% off sale on paid subscriptions
  77. Edge indexes
  78. last June’s mixtape
  79. Joy Williams at the Ransom Center
  80. Time is a spiral
  81. Starting with an ampersand
  82. blind drawings
  83. What’s helping me write now
  84. I’m interviewing Deb Chachra at Bookpeople
  85. quitting when the going is good
  86. A big pile of imperfect things
  87. He’s the gardener (a May mixtape)
  88. Some kinds of monsters
  89. A museum of technology
  90. Success means you get to do it again tomorrow
  91. Likeness and likeability
  92. my 11-year-old composer
  93. I’m like a snail on a cactus
  94. No such thing as waste
  95. Diamond Jubilee
  96. How to have fun thinking with a paper dictionary
  97. A chat with Stephanie Zacharek and Dwight Garner
  98. Two kinds of attention: narrow and wide
  99. When You Hear It (an April mixtape)
  100. You just do it and do it and do it
  101. On not giving up on giving up
  102. Letters mingle souls
  103. Steven Soderbergh on reading
  104. My typewriter interview with Mary Ruefle
  105. Back to the beginning
  106. The meek inherit the earth
  107. Basic pleasantries
  108. Monthly mixtapes
  109. Show Your Work! turns 10
  110. My favorite artist
  111. Downtown Austin recommendations
  112. Handmind is heartwork
  113. Sam Anderson on writing and drawing
  114. Joy in repetition
  115. Showing Steven how to fold zines
  116. Every writing book is good
  117. 29-day Practice and Suck Less challenge
  118. Snails and magical thinking
  119. More gardening metaphors
  120. gardening metaphors
  121. Why don’t you try typing?
  122. 100 things that made my year (2023)
  123. the books I actually did read

2023 28

  1. Solstice vibes
  2. 20 books I didn’t read this year
  3. Retrograde rocket
  4. Holiday practice
  5. Pizza night blockbusters 2021-2023
  6. Signed books for the holidays
  7. Remembering what you want out of books
  8. The 2023 Kleon Studios Gift Guide
  9. Drawings of Andre 3000 interviews
  10. keep my ass in the chair
  11. Gratitude zines
  12. Dispatches from California
  13. 3 recent newsletters
  14. It takes a daily effort to be free
  15. Defined by negatives
  16. annular eclipse
  17. The Church Of Minding One’s Own Business
  18. melted 45s
  19. Hanif Abdurraqib
  20. not to waste my mid-life crisis
  21. Sleep, creep, leap
  22. they had already fledged
  23. cactus surgery
  24. right to left
  25. Living For Dinnertime
  26. Curiouser
  27. Normal is what you can successfully ignore
  28. How it can’t kill anything worth keeping around

2022 5

  1. Comfort Work
  2. scraps in my drawer
  3. Would I do it tomorrow?
  4. One thing leads to another
  5. 21 good books i read in 2021

2021 14

  1. one of my lifted type collages
  2. Iain McGilchrist on the coincidence of opposites
  3. The magic of the brush
  4. Several Short Sentences About Writing
  5. an interview between the two of us
  6. fame never fixes anything for anybody.
  7. new technology
  8. The Art of Noticing
  9. more light
  10. Relocate your darlings!
  11. Back in the day
  12. another canyon
  13. Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation
  14. my owl box

2020 11

  1. What It Is
  2. Chuck Berry
  3. this note to myself
  4. doomscrolling
  5. Pearblossom Highway
  6. Welcome!
  7. a sense of lightness
  8. what you’re really trying to say
  9. Jason Polan
  10. hide and seek
  11. life is not linear

2019 15

  1. Your output depends on your input
  2. the greatest song ever written about success
  3. read old books
  4. The Ten Commandments!
  5. On moderate giftedness
  6. digging and scratching
  7. spooky things
  8. Keep it on The One
  9. Wire’s rules of negative self-definition
  10. curious elder
  11. You’ve got to be kind
  12. Not my cup of tea!
  13. Why Wasn’t I Consulted?
  14. good teachings by people who do bad things
  15. Live in Rome concert from 1980

2018 16

  1. mapping out the instruments
  2. the listening to that which wants to be done
  3. Paper is a wonderful technology (part two)
  4. Be the candle or the mirror that reflects it
  5. swimming upstream
  6. on this date
  7. The cruelest month.
  8. sundowning
  9. sketchbook
  10. emotional and spiritual fallout
  11. Shoal Creek Book Walk
  12. It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now. It just needs to exist
  13. cigarette pencil
  14. A dad comic from 2018
  15. something to look forward to
  16. about soup.

2017 8

  1. guardian spirit for my notebook
  2. How do I hide and still be found?
  3. Virginia Woolf
  4. Creative mornings
  5. suck-cessful
  6. it throws them into relief
  7. Learning how to learn again
  8. what I wrote

2016 1

  1. It wasn’t for me

2014 1

  1. this list of 33 thoughts on reading

2013 1

  1. something small, every day