Walking on Thin Air by Geoff Nicholson – book launch

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Event details

Part memoir part guide. Being present and open to the world when you walk, true mindfulness.

Please join us with Travis Elborough in conversation with Geoff Nicholson, talking about Geoff’s latest book Walking on Thin Air: A Life’s Journey in 99 Steps. This moving but often funny book is an intelligent, thought-provoking insight into the power of simply walking, alive and awake to all that is present, giving flow to a vital stream of creative ideas and ruminations.

Geoff Nicholson has been walking ever since he could. Part urban explorer, part psychogeographer, rambler and flâneur, wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, city, desert or area of outstanding natural beauty, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it damages and even destroys us.

Geoff’s walking took on a new meaning when he was diagnosed with CMML, a rare type of blood cancer, treatable but not curable. He is acutely aware that he won’t always be able to even walk up the hill to his hospital appointments every three months. Although he vows to continue to walk for as long as he can, Geoff knows that sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there is for everybody else.

The 99 reflections in this book are a scattering of thoughts, memories and a poignant awareness of his own mortality. He describes his own walks and relates them to the walks of others – to the walking of street photographers such as Gerry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Daido Moriyama; artists Richard Long, John Baldessari, Sophie Calle; and writers, José Luis Borges, Kathy Acker, Teju Cole, Lauren Elkin and Virginia Woolf, who Leonard knew had died because she left her walking stick on the riverbank.

The Stanford Bookshop event will start promptly at 7.00pm.

Includes glass of wine/soft drink

20% off the published price of Walking On Thin Air for ticket holders when purchased on the evening.