Isla Aitken will be hosting an author event with Sandy Winterbottom about Sandy's incredible book The Two-Headed Whale.
In 2016, feeling burnt out from an academic career and under the weight of her husbands chronic depression, Sandy Winterbottom ran away to sea for a six-week voyage by tall-ship from Uruguay to South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. The journey followed in the footsteps of her then hero Ernest Shackleton, touring the spectacular islands and wildlife havens of the Southern Oceans, but in South Georgia, she discovered a darker side to the Antarctic, one deeply enmeshed with Scotland’s past: the legacy of twentieth century industrial-scale whaling. In a time of ecological crisis, there is much to be learned from the way the whaling industry operated.
This book draws prophetic parallels to the present day climate emergency and recognises that environmental and human exploitation are deeply entwined. A vivid and immediate work of non-fiction that nudges at the boundaries of the genre, exploring the natural and human history of the seas and remote islands of the Southern Oceans.
Sandy Winterbottom spent most of her career as an academic teaching and researching in the Environmental Sciences at Stirling University. In 2010, she left to work in the renewables industry but following a life-changing trip to South Georgia and the Antarctic in 2016, she returned to study and completed the Creative Writing Masters Programme at Stirling University. She lives near Muckhart in Central Scotland. This is her first book.
This event will be held in the Seabird Centre Theatre and is recommended for adults and older children (12+).
Marine Fest is supported by the North Berwick Trust.