All The Write Stuff: Catbird

Inspired by true events, is a poignant fable about a woman, her husband and a Catbird, set against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Reflecting on global conflicts and human resilience, the book offers a universal message of hope and solidarity in tumultuous times worldwide.

Catbird

By Julia Marie Davis

Genre: Women’s Fiction, Current Affairs

With the immediacy of an op-ed and the narrative feel of a memoir, Catbird embodies the visceral response—angst and exasperating sense of helplessness inflamed by the distance between the will of the people and our national policy, and the bewilderment we feel—to the barbaric violence and violations of human rights happening in Ukraine. Set against the background of seasonal drama in the bird world, it has the sense of a fable, while still holding all the anxiety of the contemporary events we are living through, witnessing, mourning, and opposing.

Told in a series of micro-episodes, Davis channels the fears and fragility of the world order, mirroring the anxiety caused by a continual barrage of contemporary conflicts we are living through: witnessing, mourning, opposing. A simple and straightforward story on the surface, Catbird expresses untold angst and an exasperating sense of helplessness. This feeling is inflamed by the distance between the will of the people, evolving national policies, and the bewilderment we feel—to the barbaric violence and the violations of human rights unfolding not just in Ukraine but elsewhere around the world.

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Catbird author Julia Marie Davis Author Discussion Guide

Why did you feel the novella was the best format for the story you wanted to tell with "Catbird"? The fictional novella format allowed me to write to the essence of the story, focusing on the intense emotions of the narrator and pivotal moments. My aim with "Catbird" was to create a powerful impact in a short space. The novella's lyrical, compact structure with its 24 sections helps to maintain a tight narrative, emphasizing the subtle interplay between the natural world, the human experience and the ever-unfolding world around us. Fictionalizing what began as a true event and characters allowed me to shape the characters in a way that created a more powerful narrative.

How do you think your novel illustrates the deep-rooted connection between nature and humanity? "Catbird" delves into the symbiotic relationship between nature and humanity, showing how our lives are intertwined with the natural world. The narrator in the novella finds solace, guidance, and reflection in nature; and in this story she turns to nature to help her understand the unfolding war in Ukraine – though it’s accidental and unfolds through the story.

What responsibility do you think artists and writers have to open up conversations about the effects of war on humanity? How do you try to do this with your writing? Artists and writers hold a unique position to mirror, challenge, and inspire societal change. As writers I believe we have a responsibility to shine a light on the profound effects of anything on humanity, in this case it was war; to humanize those impacted, and to question the narratives surrounding conflict. In "Catbird," I approach this by focusing on the personal aftermath of war, exploring how it reverberates through the lives of individuals like the narrator, the direct community of Ukraine, as well as anyone reacting to the sudden and unexpected invasion. Using an intimate storytelling method, I wanted to evoke empathy, to prompt readers to think critically about the human cost of war.

How did the current world conflicts in the real-life news inform your fiction writing? Current world conflicts have a way of seeping into the collective consciousness, shaping our fears, hopes, and understanding of the world. While writing "Catbird," I was deeply distraught by the contrast between the modern, peaceful life that Ukrainians were living, versus the utter destruction that was caused in the aftermath of this unfounded land-grabbing invasion. I was distraught that one man – Putin – could direct and cause such destruction. And

of course, living near New York City at the time, I was weary of another 9-1-1 type of experience or worse—and I have heard from others the same. What that puts together for all of us is a world that is influenced by the pervasive sense of uncertainty, cheered by the stories of resilience while also feeling the deep loss that emerges from these conflicts.

The Ukraine invasion seeped into my consciousness night and day during the first two months of that conflict and created the emotional tone of the novella, the decisions of the characters, and the broader themes of survival, displacement, and the quest for peace.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process? My writing process for "Catbird" was both structured and organic. The story unfolded as it came out, which is what happens when you are writing from a deeply unconscious place. I allowed the story to evolve naturally as I wrote. I always write first thing in the morning after I’d watched the news and sat on my front porch as the story unfolded in front of me. It was a process of discovery, where the story revealed itself layer by layer, day by day. I did minimal editing after it was written, keeping to the sparse style. In addition, I added the last section in February of 2024 after the death of Navalny, whom I took to be a symbol of hope for a more democratic Russian government. Russian is an enormous country to wide-ranging impact on the world; and if it had come under the control of someone like him, I would perhaps think that this unjust war would end. He’s somewhat controversial because at first he supported the annexation of Crimea, and that has upset many Ukrainian people; however is very real death for me at least, still marked the end of the hope that this and other invasive threats from Russian would end.

What authors or books inspire you and your writing? I'm inspired by authors who explore the complexities of human nature and the world around us. Writers like Annie Dillard, with her keen observations of nature. But I am deeply and wholly influenced by women writers who have changed the way novellas are shaped to mirror the interior workings of the mind; in particular, Virginia Woolf, in “Waves” and “To the Lighthouse” as well as Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and “Citizen” by Claudia Rankin. These works are touchstones of artistic expression that distill the kind of emotional depth and narrative resonance I strive to achieve in my work.

Thank you! For more information go to: www.catbird24.com

All Author proceeds from this book signing will be donated to Operation White Stork (www.whitestork.us)

A veteran run Non-profit that supports troops in Ukraine

EXCERPT

Rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns ring in my ears and I shut off the morning news to sit on the porch, to check the weather, to soak in the early morning sun. I open the news app on my phone but try to limit myself to five minutes. Saturday morning. My husband is sleeping in.

According to a recent census, Russian is the native language of 29% of Ukrainians. Some of these people were bussed out of the area before the war, now barely being fed inside the invading country. My grandmother's parents were from Lomza, Poland, part of Russia in the 1880s, a crossroads, a multi-cultural place where various cultures and religions lived among one another. Why did they leave in 1900? I don't know. In 1944, the town was wiped out.

I know nothing of the Ukrainian past of my grandfather. I can feel the blood flow. That is all.

At the beginning of the war, the news chattered away about the sympathizers at the border. How many of them were packed up by Russia, taken from their homes and sent in busses to the mother country? As if they'd really asked for this.

No one talks about them now. The last thing we heard was they were given $120 in Russian money for food each week (or month) and housed somewhere.

Are they dead or alive? No one would know. They are inside. Banished to God-knows.

They are the ones, news reports say, who wanted to be part of Russia. As if they are to blame for this and not the social media propaganda run by Putin trolls.

I wonder what they think these months later as their houses are flattened by tanks, their land burned, ransacked. As they hear about crops and neighbors and relatives tortured, dying. As they watch their villages and towns fall to ash. Does it become personal, then?

An ad for light cotton sweaters floats across my phone screen, enticing me to click on Summer Linens. I am feckless—shopping online for white clothing, looking at lovely, quite clean-looking new dresses that I do not need—that I will later buy on sale for no occasion.

I am guilty of something.

Before my grandfather left to fight in World War II, he moved with my mother and her sister, and my grandmother moved every three months during the early days of the war. Training officers, my grandfather was a reservist who'd been called up, a thirty-eight-year-old Corporal.

I think of my mother now, making friends at ten years old, reinventing a new self every time she moved. An improved self, she told me later. Adapting a new accent. Feigning a new laugh. A new persona. Living in a motel cottage smaller than my bedroom. My mother hasn't forgotten this skill and sometimes I catch her being someone else, the memory seared into her cells. Her people, she says, were killed in the Holocaust. Not just Jews. Random Poles slaughtered just for helping, for being sympathetic, for hiding friends and neighbors.

Someone with my mother's genes is going to die today, is all I can think.

I look up at the pale sky, clouds float by and I can hear the surprise and the horror and the shells and see the bodies. I can feel their breath seeping out and trying to hold onto the air.

I see darkness in a lightened sky and wonder – when will it strike?

Are we next?

“Julia Davis’s Catbird is a lyric meditation on a wounded world, one where some of us are safe while horror and war ravage innocent women and children in a distant land. But are we safe? The narrator knows too keenly, and feels too sharply, to believe that we are. Davis writes viscerally and from the heart.”

—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer

“Julia Davis’s Catbird is an urgent, meaningful meditation on war, power, and fragility of the world. It’s 2022 and the invasion of Ukraine has begun. From her place of relative safety, Eve reads of the bombings, the fleeing families and abandoned crops as she ponders the corrupt desire for absolute power and fears she is witnessing the beginnings of World War III. Woven throughout this witnessing are images of the birds she watches in the trees around her house, making tangible the fragility we share in this time when the possibility of invasion threatens us all.”

—Karen Osborn, author of Centerville, Patchwork (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Between Earth and Sky, and The River Road

“As a woman of color cheering for those who wish to survive any and all wars against us I hope you read this book with the fear yet compassion it shares."

—nikki giovanni, New York Times best selling and Emmy-award nominated author of Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004), and Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose (2020)

Amazon * Middle Creek Publishing * Bookbub * Goodreads

Book Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Catbird-Julia-Davis-ebook/dp/B0DK1TNV83

Middle Creek Publishing: https://www.middlecreekpublishing.com/catbird

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/catbird-by-julia-davis

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217262729-catbird

About the Author

Julia Marie Davis is an American poet and novelist. Julia's writing has appeared in The Bangalore Review, The Dillydoun Review, New Note Poetry, Moonstone Arts Center's Nasty Women's Anthology , and TaintTaintTaint Literary Magazine. She holds a BA in English from Boston College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her novella, CATBIRD (2024, Middle Creek Publishing & Audio) weaves a fictional narrative with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, delivering a poignant lyrical message of hope and resilience in the face of global turmoil.

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