Swimming Stories (title TK) is a singular, brilliantly charming memoir that oscillates between the very different worlds of competitive and recreational swimming. Between 1988 and 1992, Leanne Shapton spent all of her time outside of school endeavouring to make the Canadian Olympic swimming team. Once she decided to leave the pros behind, she continued to swim at every chance in pools, lakes, and oceans around the world, with an array of exquisite characters in fascinating places. Her spare, elegant and pitch-perfect writing explores professional and amateur swimming, suburban adolescence, immigration, and family. Similar to Twyla Tharp"s bestselling how-to book, The Creative Habit, Shapton discusses how she applied the disciplines of athletics to her passions for art and drawing; from taking a stopwatch to bed and racing mentally, to finding her place as an award-winning artist, her memoir will be read by anyone and everyone searching for creativity and passion in their life. This is a book about competitive pressures, athletic communities and private passions, rather than about taking the gold. It is also about the joy of solitary activity, as examined in books about running, such as Murakami"s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The perspective is from that of the contender, rather than the champion. Illustrated throughout, the book will include drawings, archival photographs, and gorgeous images that propel the reader through a beautifully personal and universally appealing coming-of-age story.