Paddle on the road

Jasper Winn is on the road again, talking about his book, Paddle, about kayaking around Ireland in the worst summer in living memory (see below for a nice video clip of him meeting a shark). He will promoting ‘Slow Adventure’ at Stuckeridge Literary and Music Festival, Devon, on 24 March. Then on home ground at Dingle's Féile Na Bealtaine arts festival (3–6 May), and West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry on 11th July, where he will be joined by fellow Sort Of author, Chris Stewart.

Kathleen Jamie’s ‘My Life in Writing’

The Guardian has selected Kathleen Jamie as their featured author for ‘My Life in Writing’ on Easter Saturday – and The Observer will be serialising her new book, Sightlines, the following day. She will also be appearing on Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour on April 11th. Sightlines has been selected by Waterstones as their ‘Book of the Month’ in Scotland.

Leviathan turns Chinese

Peter Blegvad’s Book of Leviathan has just come out in Chinese. This is extraordinary given that Blegvad’s comic strips, originally published in the Independent, are densely packed with wordplay and puns. Yet China Times have succeeded in translating the adventures of the faceless baby Levi, his big sister, cat and pink rabbit, in its entirety. Chinese speakers can now understand the perfect stasis that results from a cat falling with buttered toast strapped to its back, or watch the way in which, strip by strip, the cookie crumbles. Next stop for Levi is Paris, where the new French comics firm, L’Apocalypse, are setting to work with their punning dictionaries.

Sort Of – incidentally – took its name from Peter Blegvad’s first album with his group Slapp Happy. If you’re curious, here’s the wonderful opening track.

New Simon Lewis thriller out in April

Simon Lewis, whose thriller, Bad Traffic, has now been published in five languages, has a new thriller out in April 2012. Titled  Border Run, it is the story of two gap year friends who get caught up in murder and mayhem in the Chinese jungle. Think Deliverance meets The Beach. Its advance reviews include raves in The Bookseller and The Word, which has this to say: “If Elmore Leonard is praising your crime thrillers, you know you’re doing something right ... Border Run ought to consolidate Lewis’s growing reputation as a writer of tautly plotted, superbly paced fiction, whose gleeful twists and turns also betray the author’s screenwriting credentials.”

Meetings with remarkable sharks

Jasper Winn has been touring his book, Paddle: A Long Way Around Ireland, around the festivals. And this is the clip everyone loves: Jasper kayaking straight into a shark, which then swims under him. Watch the Video

If you’d like to hear Jasper talking about his trip, and his relationship with Ireland, there’s an extended interview on the Outdoors Station website.

Chris Stewart cooks for Rick Stein

Rick Stein’s Spain concluded with a visit to Sort Of author Chris Stewart at his farm in Spain.  Rick enthused about Chris’s Driving Over Lemons, his book about buying the farm, and the misadventures that followed, while Chris cooked up tabblouleh and wild boar stew. Driving Over Lemons soared up Amazon to no 4, returning to the bestsellers list, along with its sequels A Parrot in the Pepper Tree and The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society. Chris is currently working on a new title – his first in three years.