Yrsa Daley-Ward, THE CATCH
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
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[0:44]Here's said daily word is the author of the catch, a novel.
[0:48]She is an acclaimed author and poet, best known for the terrible and bone, her new
[0:52]novel The Catch marks her debut fiction.
[0:55]Welcome, yes, Ed.
[0:56]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to Zibi to talk about The Catch, a novel
[1:01]congratulations.
[1:02]Thank you.
[1:03]It's my pleasure.
[1:04]Thank you for helping me.
[1:05]My pleasure, too.
[1:06]What a book.
[1:07]Oh my gosh.
[1:08]So you have a very unique writing style.
[1:10]You are drawn right in.
[1:12]It is so captivating and wow, really, very cool.
[1:18]Very cool.
[1:19]I have lots of questions.
[1:20]Let's start though by you just telling what the book is about.
[1:24]Yeah, absolutely.
[1:25]So I'm on tour, so I'm giving a little bit better about keeping the short and succinct.
[1:29]So The Catch follows two twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, and a couple of weeks after they
[1:36]were born, their mother just went missing, walked out, disappeared, they say, into
[1:41]the Thames, went missing, presumed dead.
[1:45]So of course, as a result of this, the mother was the only parent we know about.
[1:50]So they grew up and they were adopted into different families and grew up estranged and
[1:55]slightly at odds with each other, even though they both never left South London.
[2:00]So they both were aware of each other and would see each other occasionally, but not often
[2:05]very estranged.
[2:06]And on their 30th birthday, which is where we meet them, one of the sisters, the one that's
[2:12]seen is slightly more successful with more, just more things happening in the world, Clara.
[2:18]She's a celebrity author.
[2:20]She sees somebody who she thinks is their mother.
[2:23]The reason why she thinks it's their mother is because the person has the exact same name
[2:28]and it's the spitting image of the photos that they have of her.
[2:32]The only thing is, this appears to be a version of their mother before, well, around
[2:37]the time when she went missing, so before she really had children, so their 30 and their
[2:44]mother's 30 and the novel is all about, can this be?
[2:48]And if this can be, how could this be?
[2:51]Clara believes it is their mother fully.
[2:53]Dempsey thinks that this woman is a con woman and it's all about what happens when the
[2:58]stranger comes hurtling into their lives.
[3:02]Wow.
[3:03]Okay.
[3:04]How did you think of this?
[3:05]Do you have a twin sister?
[3:06]How did you think of this whole thing?
[3:07]Oh, you know, twins are so fascinating to me.
[3:10]I only know two sets of twins as well, but it came to me because I think about my
[3:18]own mother so much who passed away what some almost 20 years now, and every so often
[3:25]I'll just, I'll see somebody walking down the street and just have that sense of longing,
[3:30]you know, that just, that, that hot sense of like, what would it be to experience her
[3:35]again, to, to touch her, to have a conversation, even if it was just for a weekend or something
[3:39]like that.
[3:40]And this, you know, books can be wishful film and it can be a great way to like delve into
[3:45]something like a fantasy or something you wish was true.
[3:49]And so yeah, I would see versions of, well, people who resemble my mother either in
[3:54]stature or just made me think of her.
[3:56]And I, I, I wanted to write into that also what would my mum be like at my age?
[4:02]How would it be to encounter her and then we're all the same age would I get off with
[4:05]her?
[4:06]Would I not?
[4:07]So that was what can brought this story into being.
[4:10]Oh my gosh, my daughter and I actually, um, are almost in writing a graphic novel about
[4:16]a middle school girl who goes back and meets her mom at a dance at the same age.
[4:20]I love that idea.
[4:22]I love, I love a similar, uh, motivation, right?
[4:26]Like how do you get to know your family and it when you're, when you have such a big age
[4:31]gap or, and you never will.
[4:33]And I guess experiencing our parents is something other than who they are to us.
[4:38]is, is, you know, a mind bender as well.
[4:41]Yes.
[4:42]And I'm so sorry about your losing your mom.
[4:44]That's terrible.
[4:45]I'm so sorry.
[4:46]Thank you.
[4:47]Thank you so much.
[4:48]You know, it, it seeps its way into a lot of the things I write either, I mean, I consider
[4:53]it like a, you know, a great richness.
[4:55]It does it way in many, many, many different forms into different things that I write.
[5:01]And how old are you and, and what happened if I can ask?
[5:04]My mother passed away, you know, I'm saying 20, but it's probably more like about
[5:09]were probably because I, I keep the, um, the number like very, like, wispy in my mind.
[5:14]But it were probably getting on to 16 years.
[5:17]I was in my early 20s and my mom had breast cancer.
[5:21]And that was how, you know, after quite a long battle with breast cancer, she passed away.
[5:26]So it was at a very, I mean, I don't think there's any good age, but it was a very distinct
[5:33]age in my life.
[5:33]So as I, as I age, I start to remember my mother as the age that I'm getting, I'm getting
[5:39]close.
[5:40]So the age to, the age that I remember her read is probably about my age now.
[5:45]Hmm.
[5:46]Oh my gosh.
[5:47]Do you feel like writing the book and going through this exercise of sort of imagining,
[5:53]does it make you feel better?
[5:54]Does it make you feel for, is it like a bittersweet experience or does it feel soothing?
[6:01]Well, you know, I think life is bittersweet.
[6:03]And I don't, I never attribute like a single feeling to an experience.
[6:08]You know, there's, I think that in deep grief, we also access levels of deep love.
[6:14]Mm hmm.
[6:15]They, that you, you reach sometimes at the other side of these things.
[6:19]So I never, I don't experience that even though it's a very, very difficult thing.
[6:25]It's not, it's not, it doesn't lie purely in the negative for me.
[6:28]It's given me pathways into storytelling and nurturing and warmth and being able to hold
[6:36]space and time for other people.
[6:38]So I think, you know, any kind of tragedy or anything that we undergo is kind of like,
[6:45]it kind of increases your capacity in other areas if you're willing to, to open the door.
[6:50]I love that.
[6:51]That's a nice way of the silver lining.
[6:54]Yes.
[6:55]I have to, I think, I believe in silver lining and not just as a kind of, as a device,
[7:01]but also repastening in your brain.
[7:04]I think I, that's how I live my life, you know, everything is multiple things.
[7:09]So it does not know how we frame things and also how we talk about things.
[7:13]Wait, take me back into your life for a minute.
[7:16]So you're in your 20s, your mother passes away.
[7:19]What were you doing in your life then and what's happened since then?
[7:22]So I had, at the time, I just moved to London and I remember I moved up in the northwest
[7:30]of England, Manchester and I was like, this place is too, I want to go somewhere else.
[7:35]You know, I love Manchester, but I just moved from there.
[7:38]And Manchester isn't where I grew up at the ways, it's where I landed there, but I've
[7:42]always been like from the northwest of England.
[7:44]And I wanted to move somewhere, I was, I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to write some
[7:50]more.
[7:51]I was always a writer.
[7:52]It was, it halted my progress in lots of areas, but also allowed me to access things
[7:58]as I said before that I don't think everyone has access to, I mean, you can't sometimes
[8:03]before you've experienced something.
[8:05]So then, but how did you become an author?
[8:08]I've always been that.
[8:10]I was lucky enough to have a mother who, she was a Jamaican immigrant, so she came to England
[8:17]in her teens and really, when she had me, which was not until her twenties, she, she
[8:23]impressed the need for writing as not only as like a communication tool, but also education,
[8:31]you know, you write so that you can move in the world and, and really taught me to read
[8:36]at a very young age, so I had a very advanced reading age.
[8:39]And I think that with, with some children, if the early you introduced them to language
[8:44]the more facility they, they may have with it.
[8:47]And because of that, it worked for me, she, she taught me to read, so I was reading it
[8:51]too.
[8:52]Oh, my gosh, not only that, but I mean, this is for better or worse, right?
[8:58]She had a collection of books and I'm talking about all types of books, I had access
[9:03]to whatever I wanted to read, so I rather a vastly advanced age.
[9:09]She didn't just give me children's books, I could read anything.
[9:12]So not only that is that I was brought up at my grandparents too, who knew the Bible
[9:16]inside out and I had to learn that.
[9:19]So there was everything, there was everything there.
[9:22]And because of that, I was able to really understand people and literature and language
[9:28]in a very, the very deep way.
[9:30]So because of that writing was the natural thing that I, I went to, to tell my truth.
[9:37]It's just, it's just such a dense and rich place for me of expression.
[9:42]And I love that books and novels, shoulders like what people really think and what versus
[9:47]what they say and what people do versus what they want to do.
[9:51]All of that complexity was just very, very seductive to me.
[9:55]And so I've always, just the written word is just, ah, such a dose.
[10:00]light to me always will be. I think that's so great because in the book you have an author
[10:07]being an author is very different than being somebody who likes to write on their own but the
[10:11]trappings of being a successful author and the glamorous headshot and the fans and people
[10:18]knowing your work in setting out and the creepiness factor and all of that you poke fun at that
[10:22]a little bit in the book as well. Tell me a little bit about that. Well I think you have to.
[10:28]I think you have to because maybe it's because I'm from the north of England but we do not take
[10:32]ourselves too seriously so it can be funny when work is taken in a way. I mean I do think that
[10:39]literature is a bridge and I do think in some ways it can be life and death you know because you
[10:45]write to feel not so alone. You read to feel not so alone but also you cannot have an inflated
[10:54]sense of ego. So I have to pull fun at it because you get involved in so many situations and when
[11:00]you do anything public facing that you got a laugh at. So yeah it's very easy for me to find that
[11:06]inside of the book. Okay what's something that you considered putting in the book and you're like
[11:11]no no I'm just not going to do that but that was like super fun and you know. Oh no I never I
[11:16]put everything in. You did. I don't have the sense of going too far inside of it but if you can
[11:23]conceive it and if it happens in real life or you can conceive something parallel to that why not
[11:29]put it in. You know the reason why is because I think that writing is where I go for wildness
[11:35]especially as an introvert. So I'm like let it all hang out. I need to say it, say it, why not?
[11:42]And so that's why as well it's so kind of addictive for me because I could use all those split
[11:48]selves and selves that are not appropriate or things that you don't say and put it into the work.
[11:53]So I don't have that that self I did say that's that wants to pull back. This is an area of my
[11:59]life where I don't pull back. Nice I love that. You did did something structurally which I found
[12:04]really interesting because every few pages you have like almost a little quote and it's indented
[12:09]or it's a skew or there's a line. And then I was wondering what if I connect all of these things.
[12:14]So I was going through it. I'm like do they actually make is it a puzzle? Like am I supposed to have
[12:19]a different narrative connect all of these lines? But no. I don't think so. Yeah. I tried that.
[12:25]I love you tried. I love that. Yeah that's a really good idea that the way. But no I just you know
[12:32]sometimes as these things are coming through I'll just throw them in the position that
[12:38]something other than me I don't know tells me to do and I just do it. And I don't I don't
[12:43]double think it especially when it comes to structure. It's just something about the breathing or
[12:48]something about the space or even the two lines that I think you want to pay attention to
[12:53]fall into the next part. Well it's very cool. Makes you stop. You're always stopping to think
[12:59]like what is the reason and then like wanting to make an Instagram post event or something like that.
[13:04]You know like some of these lines not all of them like but some of them like but then things
[13:10]are rarely as we hoped are they? And then on the next page but things are rarely as we hoped
[13:15]are they? But then you do it differently. So it's like a poem but you are treating the words.
[13:19]I don't know. It's very it's very interesting. Very cool. You know poetry is just such an excellent
[13:25]entry point into in select writing and novel I think because in poetry we can there's just more
[13:31]the seems to be more space. So put if you want to put one word and then break the line you can
[13:36]and I do take that into my novel writing because why not? Yeah I love it. So what are all the
[13:43]different things you have? What are all the balls in the air that you have in your life right now?
[13:47]If I was to think about them I'd probably climb back into beds. Like I you know the balls in the air
[13:55]I think because those are the lots of reasons. Number one is I feel like I just have a lot of
[14:01]I mean a moment. It's not always currently in a moment where I have a lot of ideas burning. Second
[14:07]is survival you know authors need to get paid. So I have a lot of things you know I'm a touring poet.
[14:15]You know I do sometimes I'll do commissions for brands or something if I like them. I have my
[14:21]sub-stack. I do speaking works you know do speaking work and lots of different things that mean a
[14:27]a lot to me. So there are a lot of different things going on at any one time and that's just how
[14:32]I know to live as an artist without having like a full-time like office job or something that I go
[14:39]into. So it's been like that for for many years and so I do I do stay busy but I mean a lot of
[14:46]that is out of necessity as well. And how do you manage your time and stay organized?
[14:53]I manage my time you know deep solitude is really important to me and I've noticed
[15:00]you know if I've ever had that in question I just need to be around someone else for a good 48 hours
[15:06]and I'll feel like oh no I need my solitude but yeah I have to protect my time especially the
[15:15]morning hours which is my right and time. Right now I'm right very from very early and I'm going
[15:20]to the afternoon very early afternoon and I need that time to just breathe into here myself
[15:27]otherwise the the waves of the day and the responsibilities of being an adult and all the things
[15:32]we have to do get in the way and they start to shrink my focus. So the same as in Instagram and
[15:38]all of the other social networks they just do because you're looking at things for like a short
[15:43]amount of time so your brain will fragment itself. So I really have to protect my space in the
[15:49]morning and that is how I do it and so the day the hardest thing is usually the first thing
[15:54]in the day and then you know more of the admin related tasks I try to push down because they're
[16:00]easier to do with less less focus. It isn't easy but everyone has their systems and I'm always
[16:10]always hoping that I'll find a system that's like perfect. It's like oh no it's so easy to
[16:15]manage life. You know when you find it tell me because I'm not going to the weight of it I'm like
[16:22]this is a lot. So on tour already for the book tell me when you've been hearing that you're
[16:28]surprised about or reactions to the book you weren't expecting anything like that.
[16:33]Well the interest I've got two parts of that question the interesting part about being on tour
[16:38]is you're on tour before the majority of people have read it. So it's new for me because it's
[16:43]my first fiction novel so it's new for me to be on a tour for a novel as opposed to be on
[16:50]tour for a poetry book which you you know when you're on tour for a poetry book you just perform
[16:54]the poems and it's about the poems and with a novel you're reading the next set and talking about
[17:00]these characters that people haven't met yet. So that's different it's a different gear
[17:05]and I think yeah I think I think the other thing is that you've been alone with the work for
[17:13]so long and then all of a sudden it meets the air and I am excited. I am excited for people to
[17:20]to reach them to for the characters to reach people but in the few people that have read the book
[17:27]I'm surprised at how deep into it some things that you know writing surprises us so I'm surprised
[17:36]sometimes at the depth of it and and what it reveals the mirrors that it reveals about us all
[17:43]and how we cope and how we survive and sometimes in the writing of something you don't realize
[17:48]how much how much of yourself is in there and also how much how much you're working with
[17:56]how much is in in the sort of marrow and then it meets the air and you're like wow I really
[18:01]feel like this about this so it is it's it's shocking and I'm so grateful that there's somewhere to
[18:08]put it I love that I love it so much. Wait tell me how you linked up with glory at him because
[18:14]for all she's amazing I've had her on the podcast a couple times and in the back of the book
[18:18]there's a little description of well-read black girl books can I just read it so that people
[18:23]understand what it is so well-read black girl books is a collection of magnetic debut fiction
[18:27]that invites readers to explore powerful narratives rooted in diverse cultural experiences these
[18:33]stories offer readers an opportunity to step into new worlds expand their horizons and experience
[18:38]the transformative power of fiction just as the well-read black girl community celebrates literature
[18:43]that resonates deeply these books are crafted to not only be read but cherished shared and revisited
[18:49]for years to come characters that stay with you long after the final page. Glory at him.
[18:54]Glory is brilliant and you know I've seen glory on their scene as it were for years
[19:00]for years I remember meeting her at Sydney right as festivals that some six years ago
[19:06]and but also being aware of her work in New York when we were both in New York and so this
[19:11]pairing you know things just seem to happen at the right time this pairing was perfect for
[19:15]to be like the inaugural novel like to be to be the first one she's she's putting out under this
[19:21]imprint is just it's just one of those seven different things which I think is really fantastic
[19:27]I think she's brilliant and she just her taste and her as a writer as well I agree I'm a big fan
[19:38]okay any advice for aspiring authors oh my god I've got so much how to truncate this
[19:44]I think read everything not just things you think you are into so be surprised be surprised
[19:51]there's something else say in your own work you know the people's work in listening to people
[19:56]that you disagree fundamentally with see the humanity
[20:00]seeing people. Don't limit yourself because of culture or the overwhelming cultural voice,
[20:07]listen to yourself, protect your attention and your focus. And yeah, and just just your brain,
[20:15]protect your brain from all of these kinds of, you know, notifications and pings and just constant
[20:21]bids for your attention really claim that that's what that's what I'll say. I'm trying to be
[20:26]succinct, but protect yourself from the pings. I like that. Yes. It's true. It's so true.
[20:34]Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for this book. It's so fun to read a voice that just
[20:40]literally jumps out of the page and is like, wow, so congrats. This was such a pleasure Zippy.
[20:45]Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure was fun. Okay, take care. Bye, take care. Hi. Thank you for
[20:52]listening to totally booked with Zippy, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved
[20:57]the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word.
[21:04]Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.