We chat with author Yrsa Daley-Ward about The Catch, which is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity.
Hi, Yrsa! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a writer, poet, and speaker born in England, now living between Los Angeles and wherever the work takes me. I write about longing, identity, the body, the unsayable. My work moves between poetry, memoir, fiction, and this emerging field I call poetic intelligence…where writing meets brain science, healing, and attention. I’m interested in how language changes us.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Very young! I was always writing things down. Songs, scraps and strange little observations. I loved the permission in it. You could say anything on the page, things you couldn’t always say aloud. The freedom of that stayed with me. I always feel the mot liberated on the page.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: THE LITTLE RED HEN
- The one that made you want to become an author: THE LITTLE RED HEN
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Too many Alice Walker’s too many Jeanette Winterson’s too many Toni Morrison’s
Your debut fiction novel, The Catch, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Dark. Lyrical. Oddball. Haunting. Defiant.
What can readers expect?
A fierce, lyrical novel about twin sisters, abandonment, longing, and the search for a lost mother. But more than that it’s about memory, identity, and the ways we survive what haunts us. How we author our lives. Expect poetics inside the prose and a world that gets under your skin.
Where did the inspiration for The Catch come from?
I’d been circling themes of mother-loss, sisterhood, and unspoken family stories for years. They kept showing up in poems, in fragments. At some point, the story insisted on becoming a novel. The Catch was written out of both anger and deep longing…a need to transform certain ghosts.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The twin dynamic between Clara and Dempsey was fascinating to write… two mirrors, two opposites, always circling each other. I also loved writing the stranger-woman is she their mother character, whose ambiguity and magnetism really pull the story into its deeper waters.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I’m sure. But it was like a dream, and I don’t recall the challenges now. I trusted the process, even when it was uncomfortable.
What’s next for you?
I’m touring with The Catch now and building out the utter, a platform that blends neuroscience, poetry and brain health, as I mentioned earlier. Poetic intelligence. I am always moving between forms, but it’s all connected: how language heals, how it sharpens us.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
Books I enjoyed this year are Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde. I was lucky to read an advance copy What an extraordinary writer. Also A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James – epic, brutal, brilliant. I am circling back, I think, this year to Ann Carson and Octavia E. Butler. They spark my imagination.
