A vacant editing job in 1971 at the Bangkok World, an English-language newspaper, was my entryway into journalism. Later I wrote as a freelancer in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for a collection of foreign news organizations. In 1979, I covered the exodus of Cambodians from their country following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. The following year The Washington Post took me on for what turned out to be a three-decade run at the newspaper as a writer and editor. I was the Post's Japan and Korea correspondent from 1984 to 1987, living in Tokyo, and later was its first technology editor. In 2008 I took an early retirement from the newspaper and have since focused on books and other independent writing. 

I was born in 1951 in North Carolina. I was privileged to see the world as a child, living in Bangkok, New Delhi, Jakarta and Washington, D.C., due to my father’s assignments as a diplomat. My work has continued a family connection with Asia that began in 1882 when two great-grandparents arrived in Japan as Baptist missionaries.

I now live in Washington D.C. with my wife Karen, who was a UN refugee official in Thailand during the 1979 exodus from Cambodia. We have two grown daughters and two grandchildren.

Home