Float on: ‘swim-lit’ authors to unite at Pages of Hackney and discuss mental health benefits of a chilly dip

Sink or swim: Authors Joe Minihane (left) and Jessica J. Lee (right) come to Pages of Hackney on 12 April. Photographs: Sam Kieldsen (left), Paul Capewell (right)

The art of wild swimming and its therapeutic potential is up for discussion next month at a literary event hosted by the Pages of Hackney bookshop.

The shop is celebrating being recently named London Bookshop of the Year in the British Book Awards 2018, and this event – On Swimming and Anxiety, to be held on 12 April from 7-9pm – is just one of a number it is hosting in the coming months.

Authors Joe Minihane and Jessica J. Lee have both written books on the subject of wild swimming, and will be performing readings from their works before opening up a discussion and Q&A session.

Pages of Hackney manager Jo Heygate said: “We’re really excited about this event – both Joe and Jess have written brave and honest books about swimming as a personal journey, about solitude, anxiety, and the power of nature to heal, so their conversation promises to be a rich and inspiring one.”

Brighton-based Minihane’s book Floating: A Life Regained (published by Duckworth Overlook) is an account of his outdoor swimming adventures across the UK countryside, inspired by naturalist Roger Deakin’s book Waterlog – itself an advocacy of wild swimming in Britain.

Described as “a journey of overcoming emotional and psychological problems with swimming as the medium for recovery”, Minihane’s personal work takes Deakin’s adventures a step further, by exploring the power wild swimming offers in the battle with his own anxiety problems.

Talking shop: Pages of Hackney on Lower Clapton Road. Photograph: Pages of Hackney

Speaking about the upcoming event, Minihane said: “I’m hugely excited about sharing a platform with Jessica Lee at Pages of Hackney to talk about our shared experiences of wild swimming and how it helped us both work our way through different mental health struggles.

“Swimming has long been a fix for my anxiety and I spent two and a half years retracing naturalist Roger Deakin’s classic Waterlog.

“In that time I found that cold water had a profound and powerful effect on my mental wellbeing, leaving me calmer, clear-headed and with the ability to look at things in a more rational way.”

Moving away from the great British countryside over to Europe, Lee’s book Turning: Lessons from Swimming Berlin’s Lakes (published by Virago, out in hardback and, from April 5, in paperback) chronicles her quest to swim 52 of the lakes around Berlin.

Billed as “the story of a beautiful obsession”, this is another personal account of the restorative and emboldening power of wild swimming and the personal freedom it can offer.

Lee told the Citizen: “Joe and I have often talked about our books as sort of ‘sibling’ books, with his tracing a swimming journey around Britain and mine exploring the area around Berlin.

“Both books drew on our experiences with depression and anxiety, so the event should give us a lot to talk about in terms of the healing power of nature, our shared love of cold water swimming, and how we’ve found both swimming and writing to be incredibly supportive of our well-being.

“I’m quite excited for the event, because it’s so refreshing to discuss my own book, Turning, with someone who understands what it’s like to embark on a long swimming journey.

“We both have quite strong perspectives on the role of ‘swim-lit’ in nature writing as a whole, and it should make for some fruitful conversation – plus a bevy of great swimming tips.”

Tickets to On Swimming and Anxiety are £4 each. To book a place, or to find out more about this and other upcoming literary bashes, please visit the Pages of Hackney events page here