Author · Speaker · Essayist
Iris Calder
Writing and speaking about attention — what we give it to, what it gives back, and how to find it again when it goes.
New book — The Long Attention — out 14 March
01 — The book
The Long Attention
We did not lose our attention; we lent it out, a few seconds at a time, to things that never gave it back. The Long Attention is a book about slow reading, deep work and ordinary afternoons — and a practical guide to taking the time back.
Hardback · 320 pages · Harbour & Finch · 14 March 2027
Clear, humane and quietly radical. You will read it slowly, which is the point.
02 — Ideas
Three ideas I keep coming back to.
Attention is a budget, not a battery.
You cannot recharge what you never stopped spending. The work is deciding where it goes before the day decides for you.
Boredom is the doorway.
Almost every good idea arrives in the ten minutes after we resist the urge to reach for something. Protect those minutes.
Depth is a place you go back to.
Deep work is not a heroic sprint; it is a room you return to daily, at the same hour, until it becomes easy to find.
03 — Speaking
Keynotes that leave a room quieter, in the best way.
The Long Attention
The book as a keynote: why focus erodes, and the small daily structures that bring it back. 45 or 60 minutes.
Meetings Without Noise
For leadership teams: fewer meetings, better questions, and a calendar that protects the people doing the work.
Slow Reading in a Fast Company
A workshop on reading deeply at work — reports, research, each other — with a practice the room can keep.
The Quiet Hour
An intimate talk and conversation for festivals and libraries, with a reading from the new book.
The only talk at the summit people were still quoting a month later — and the only one that changed how we run our Mondays.
Iris speaks the way she writes: precisely, warmly, and without a single wasted sentence.
A rare speaker who makes an audience of four hundred feel like a conversation of four.
We booked a keynote and got a new way of working. The quiet-hour idea is now company policy.
05 — Contact
Speaking, interviews, or a letter now and then.
For keynotes and workshops, tell me about the room and the date. For the newsletter — one essay a month, never more — just leave your email.