Amy Liptrot is ten days deep into quitting smoking when we speak over Zoom. Her smoking cessation method? She left her tobacco on the mainland and she’s currently on Papa Westray (Papay to the locals), one of Orkney’s smallest islands, with zero tobacco products for sale. ‘That’s been quite effective!’ she says, with a firm nod and a soft laugh. ‘There are always new issues which raise their head. I feel like I’m dealing with some of the same old shit, just in a different way.’

Eight years after the publication of The Outrun, her memoir of alcohol addiction and recovery, Liptrot has moved back temporarily to the same island where it was written. The book has many flashbacks to clubbing and dating in London, where Liptrot worked as a journalist, but was mostly written contemporaneously.

Present-tense passages describe the cold-water swims and corncrake tracking that became part of her detox in Orkney, where she grew up on a remote sheep farm. Finding solace and purpose in nature, Liptrot has written about snorkelling through kelp forests, gazing at meteor showers and, as detailed in her second book, The Instant, searching for urban raccoons in Berlin. At one point Liptrot had a corncrake call as her phone ringtone. 

If you’ve managed to miss hearing about the wonderful Orcadian nature writer, this might be the summer when you can’t any longer. A film adaptation of The Outrun, starring Saoirse Ronan, opens the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and National Theatre Of Scotland presents its version of her book as part of the International Festival. Liptrot is also discussing The Outrun at the Book Festival in its new Edinburgh Futures Institute home.  

‘It’s a bit like things have come full circle,’ says Liptrot, sitting at her desk, a few metres away from the sea where she’s been taking daily morning dips with seals, Arctic terns and seaweed. ‘I’m thinking about the book again because of the film and the stage production. But actually, I’m ten years older and the material in the book is a long way behind me. I have children now, life is different. I feel like the people who are making the stage show and the people who were in the film, are much closer to my drinking and the struggles and pain of that time than I am right now. I know that in the last couple of weeks there have been some very intense rehearsals for the play. I’m 13 years sober but I’m glad I recorded that phase.’

Liptrot was closely involved in the film production, spending years liaising with German director Nora Fingscheidt and the crew, then working as a co-screenwriter and spending time on set during filming. The stage production, however, adapted by Scottish playwright Stef Smith and directed by Vicky Featherstone, has had almost no input from Liptrot.

‘If there had not been a film, I would have got more involved in the stage production but I just couldn’t; I didn’t have the bandwidth to approach that material again. It was impossible for me. I just gave my blessing!’ Following a one-off performance of Smith’s work-in-progress play during the 2017 Fringe, The Lyceum wanted to develop it for a longer run. ‘I assumed it had maybe slipped through the cracks or been forgotten about, until I was told in January this year that it would be in the International Festival in August! It came as a big surprise. I only saw the script last week and I like it very much indeed. It’s beautiful and moving and surprising.’

Liptrot is also full of praise for Saoirse Ronan who plays Liptrot’s character in the film, renamed as Rona (the character is unnamed in the play). ‘We’ve had a couple of chats; I really wanted to express to Saoirse about making the character her own, which she’s done. She’s not doing an impression of me. Saoirse’s very smart and committed. She learned to lamb a sheep: they hung around on the farm, day and night, waiting for the right shot and she delivered seven lambs! She learned to build drystane dykes and got in the freezing cold sea with seals. She lived in the community on Papay for a few weeks during filming so literally had some of the same experiences as me.’ 

Like Liptrot, Ronan didn’t shy away from extreme experiences, leaning into them as she researched the role. Cold-sea swimming was crucial for Liptrot, not only while she worked hard to stay sober, but for unblocking her creative process. The book describes impasses in Liptrot’s writing, which could sometimes be remedied by the adrenaline surge that follows her icy plunges into the Atlantic Ocean or North Sea. 

‘In a way, being involved in the publishing industry and appearing in public at red-carpet events . . . I don’t know if I’d say I’m comfortable with it but it’s a nice contrast to most of my life which is spent either by myself or with small children. I find it nerve-wracking but I enjoy that adrenaline. I think the whole process of putting myself out there, going onstage at a book event, is another example of the taste for extremes that I talk about in the book. Drugs and alcohol, then cold seas and living on a remote island over the winter; being public is another manifestation of that same drive.’

For now, Liptrot’s head is full of seaweed while she researches her next book. ‘There’s a bit of a seaweed revival going on in Scotland. That’s what’s motivating me right now: making the new book as good as I can. There’s lots of interesting stuff going on in science, people trying out new things. I’ve actually got a bowl of carrageen pudding I’m experimenting with in the kitchen.’
Her daily life on Papay is a mix of writing, research, morning swims and nature appreciation, this time with two sons and a partner. But she’s looking forward to her Edinburgh visit in August to see what crowds make of her memoir, eight years on, and now with two major adaptations. ‘I was a student in Edinburgh so it’s always nice to return. I was actually thinking recently about one year when I tried and failed to get a job in the Fringe office for the summer. I wish that 19-year-old me could see all the stuff I’m doing in the Festival now. It’s mental, it really is.’

The Outrun, Church Hill Theatre, 31 July–24 August, times vary, as part of Edinburgh International Festival; Amy Liptrot is at Edinburgh Futures Institute, 13 August, 1.45pm and 18 August, 7.30pm, as part of Edinburgh International Book Festival; The Outrun, Cameo Picturehouse, 15 August, 8.45pm, 9pm; Summerhall, 16 August, 12.30pm; 50 George Square, 16 August, 4pm, as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival; main picture: Lisa Swarna Khanna.