Wednesday 15 May 2019

The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds.

Hello. It’s been a while hasn’t it? I’ve been busy over the last two years. I’ve written my first book. It’s called The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds and is published on Thursday 23rd May by Elliott & Thompson.

This is a sentence I am still getting used to.




I’ve spent the last few weeks practicing reading parts of it out. I am doing the following events and would love to see you there.

22/05/19 6.30pm. Dumfries Waterstones. The grand launch. No tickets needed.

23/05/19 11am. Perth Waterstones. Informal discussion about the book and birds with coffee (and possibly cake). Free tickets here.

24/05/19 8pm. Edinburgh Queen’s Hall. Reading in support of the launch of Erland Cooper’s second album. Tickets here.

25/05/19 4pm. St Andrews Waterstones. In conversation with Robin Crawford, author of Into the Peatlands. Tickets here. (They’ve also got Jim Crumley and Amanda Thompson on later that day which will be great). 


I’ve had the following comments about it:

“The Seafarers is a beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea, or else seasonally tied to some of the most remote and stony outposts of the British archipelago. But it is also a moving meditation on the meaning of islands and the unique place they hold in the human heart. In this intimate guide to the wild beauty and complexity of seabirds, Stephen Rutt has written a powerful chronicle of resilience and fragility in the Anthropocene.”

Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable and The Small Heart of Things



“The Seafarers is a pelagic poem about the birds that exist at the coastal edges of our islands and consciousness. The stories of these hardy birds entwine seamlessly with Stephen Rutt's personal journey to form a narrative as natural and flowing as the passage of shearwater along the face of Atlantic rollers. An evocative book, I could taste the salt on my lips and smell the perfume of storm petrels.”

Jon Dunn, author of Orchid Summer

The Seafarers can be pre-ordered in all the usual places: Amazon, Waterstones, from your local indie bookshop. If you don’t have access to any of these, or can’t afford it, please see if your local library will have a copy.

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Stephen! This is the best news I've received today (and I've had a brilliant day at the Orkney Nature Festival). Good Luck with promoting it. At the end of this month I'll be checking to see whether it's in the Bird Obs shop on North Ronaldsay!

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    1. Thank you! I hope they'll have copies. I would love to do an event back up in Orkney. One of these days...

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