Distant Story Blue
By Magdalena Louise Hirt
Perfect-bound paperback | 5.25 x 8 | 152 pages | November 5, 2024 | 978-1961864160
Non-fiction | Poetry | Adventure | Sailing | Nature
Deep in the South Pacific, where they warn sailors not to go, Magdalena Louise Hirt, with her husband and four children, venture to move their boat from Bora Bora to New Zealand.
Distant Story Blue takes readers along this journey with poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, interwoven, stretched, and pulled like the lines of a taunt sail. You will experience gentle nights of calm awe and terrifying nights of near-death. Her fiction will only give you escape from this into mythical history or a post-apocalyptic future. Magdalena's non-fiction will take you through the all-to-familiar life of a mom but squeezed into 49 feet with no escape. She will share her journals, and her moments on night shift alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere. Her prose will push you to the limits of sanity as the waves and wind build, and they must seek sanctuary at Beveridge Reef, a coral atoll impossible to spot with the naked eye due to there being no land. After surviving the South Pacific, take refuge in her poetry and prose via her sailboat and campervan, as she explores all of North and South Island, New Zealand.
Reviews
“Set sail with this family, their daring life, and Magdalena Hirt’s startling, stunning writing far from solid ground.”
—Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron
“This is writing as linguistically rich as the places the author visits and as diverse in form as the ocean that inspires her.”
—Mandy Haggith, author of The Walrus Mutterer and Briny
“On a “vast motionless ocean” with no wind, no stars, no waves, and no moon, “words appear.” In Distant Story Blue, Magdalena Hirt moves deftly beyond poetry as her language adapts to Selkie’s incredible sea story of a life “…when all the world crumbles around me and all there is, is stars and ocean.”
—Joel Lipman, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Toledo
About The Author
Magdalena Louise Hirt has a Master of Arts in English Literature from the University of Toledo and a Master of Letters from the University of Highlands and Islands for Scottish Highlands and Islands Literature.
Magdalena has multiple published articles in Cruising World, one in Enchanted Living, and another in Literary Traveler. Her first four poetry chapbooks, Levels of the Ocean, Her Sea-filled Arms: Layers of Blue, Pacific Pieces, and Pacific Prescription: Leukemia Cyclone are available for purchase. One more chapbook, Her Bloody Project is due to be released January of 2025. She has four self-published chapbooks, an article published via E-book from being a featured speaker at a conference in Oxford, and poems that have been published in The Holland Sentinel, News from Hope College, The Mill from the University of Toledo, and on display at the Toledo Museum of Art, which included first place and finalist awards. At Grand Valley State University, she received 1st place in fiction and 2nd place in poetry for the Oldenburg Writing Contest. She has been a featured speaker at a literary conference in Boston and two Poetry Speaks at the University of Toledo. She is currently finishing a script, a novel, and another poetry chapbook. With her teaching degree, she has taught Middle School Language Arts and Freshman Composition at the University of Toledo.
Currently, she homeschools her four children and writes from her sailboat, which is a Westerly 49, named Selkie. Their family of six sails to circumnavigate the globe. So far, they have cruised, wintered, and been through lockdown in the following locations: the Great Lakes of Michigan, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Azores, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, the circle of the Baltic Sea, the Bay of Biscay, Canary Isles, Cape Verde, back to the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panama, French Polynesia, the Kingdom of Tonga, and New Zealand. These locations completed an Atlantic circumnavigation and a Pacific crossing. Her family plans to finish a global circumnavigation by 2027 and continue to sail.
Magdalena enjoys cooking and dancing—most of the time together. With pen, spatula, and helm in hand, her sailing soul belongs on the sea where she chooses words, academics, ingredients, and destinations. Follow their story at www.sealongingselkie.net.
