Waypoints: Seascapes and Stories of Scotland's West Coast

Description

Adventure, memoir, storytelling and celebration of all things maritime meet in Waypoints, a beautifully written account of sea journeys from Scotland's west coast. In the book Ian Stephen reveals a lifetime's love affair with sailing; each voyage honours a seagoing vessel, and each adventure is accompanied by a spell-binding retelling of a traditional tale about the sea. His writing is enchanting and lyrical, gentle but searching, and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations of each vessel, drawn by his wife, artist Christine Morrison. Ian Stephen is a Scottish writer, artist and storyteller from the remote and bewitching Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He fell in love with boats and sailing as a boy, pairing this love affair with a passion for the beautiful but merciless Scottish coastline, an inspiration and motivating force behind his poems, stories, plays, radio broadcasts and visual arts projects for many years. This book will be a delightful and absorbing read for anyone with a passion for sailing and the seas, Scotland's landscape and coastlines, stories and the origins of language and literature.

Ian Stephen is a Scottish writer, artist and storyteller. A coastguard for 15 years, in 1995 he won the inaugural Robert Louise Stevenson Award and since then has worked full-time in the arts. Since the late 70s his poetry and short fiction have been published in numerous UK journals, and in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the USA. Ian's first novel A Book of Death and Fish was published in October 2014 by Saraband. It was launched at Faclan, Hebridean Book Festival, with an interview with Robert Macfarlane. The book was positively reviewed in the Guardian by Kirsty Gunn and Robert Macfarlane listed it first in his 2014 Books of the Year choice for the Guardian. It received many other positive reviews elsewhere, especially in the Scottish press.

A really beautiful book ... movingly and saltily real * Adam Nicolson * Charming and engaging. Beautifully written, this is a book you'll find it hard to put down. * Lifeboat magazine (RNLI) * Former Isle of Lewis coastguard Ian Stephen has created a lyrical and gentle commentary on the nautical past and present. * Sailing Today * It is a dazzling book in that somehow, magically, you bring your experience as a sailor, wed to this the exquisite craftsmanship of those who make the boats, and then produce these exquisite thoughts on the art of storytelling as if all three are inextricable. That is a major feat. * Marius Kociejowski *