Caitlin Galway, "A Song for Wildcats: Stories" (Dundurn Press, 2025)

Summary

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New Books Network: Caitlin Galway on “A Song for Wildcats: Stories” (Dundurn Press, 2025)

Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Caitlin Galway
Date: December 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode of the New Books Network, host Holly Gattery interviews Caitlin Galway about her latest collection, A Song for Wildcats. Comprising five long-form stories, Galway’s book explores trauma, resilience, heartache, and the uncanny, set against varied backdrops—ranging from post-war Australia to the Troubles in Ireland and the 1968 French student revolts. The discussion delves into Galway’s organic, feeling-driven writing process and the themes and stylistic choices that unite her diverse narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins and Structure of the Collection

• Organic Beginnings: Galway shares that the collection began unintentionally, with stories emerging from personal obsessions and unresolved wounds.
  • “It wasn't a decision to write a collection...these ideas for other stories start to pop up. And so the next thing I knew, I was writing three different stories...they share my wounds and my obsessions in a way that felt very natural.” (03:21)
• Connective Tissue: Despite varied settings and characters, the stories are unified by Galway’s personal experiences and thematic fixations—particularly on grief, healing, and philosophy.

Order and Development of Stories

• The first story written was “The Lyrebird Spell”, though it was developed over a longer period and repeatedly revised.
• “The Wisp” was the first story completed in full:
  • “The Wisp was the first story that was finished, beginning to end, the first complete story...They were all sort of written at the same time and at different times.” (05:54)
• COVID allowed for slow organic growth, influencing the stories and how Galway returned to each with new insights.

Story Excerpts and Literary Style

The Wisp:

• Set in 1933 in Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown), it follows Tessa, a young woman haunted by the loss of her childhood friend, Sabrina, and grappling with queerness and grief.
• “Ultimately, it is about grief and the inability to make sense of grief, to find any kind of logic and then just move past it.” (10:33)
• Dark Whimsy: Galway and Gattery discuss the work’s balance of enchantment and darkness, aligning it with a style Gattery calls “dark whimsy.” Galway notes:
  • “People who have maybe faced a great deal of darkness are some of the most enchanted people. Maybe that is part of the response to it—to face the darkness and then go out into the world and see the beauty.” (12:44)

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Movement in Time and Place

• Galway confirms the wide-ranging timelines and geographical settings were not planned, but instinctively followed where each story needed to go.
• Example: "The Islanders"
  • Emerged from the sensation of “violence as environment” during the Troubles in Ireland, with the conflict becoming nearly atmospheric rather than tied to a specific antagonist.
  • “It became what could only be the 1960s and the 1970s in Ireland because of the Troubles. And that’s when I knew...the air is just, you know, on fire with violence and they can’t escape it.” (14:38)

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Galway's Writing Style: Feeling-Driven Prose

• Gattery describes Galway’s prose as “feeling-driven,” rather than plot- or character-driven, with a poetic, lyrical, and at times fragmented narration:

  • “It felt so feeling driven. And I think part of that is this really poetic and lyrical language that you have…some stories are plot driven, some stories are character driven...I would call it feeling driven.” (20:22)

• Galway responds:

  • “Even if it’s lyrical, even if it’s poetic...I want the language to be necessary. So even if it’s poetic, even if it’s lyrical, it’s not unnecessary. And I know that with lyrical writing...this is the point though—how this character is feeling. I’m not going to tell you how they feel, I’m going to create the feeling.” (23:54)

• Galway distinguishes writing about what pain or grief “feels like” versus what it “looks like,” noting:

  • “A person who is suffering from grief isn’t thinking about how they look in their grief...they’re in a sort of strange, almost otherworldly place that doesn’t feel quite real...really, really tremendous, enormous pain and enormous grief doesn’t feel like this planet. It feels like another world.” (25:02)

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Notable Reading: "A Song for Wildcats"

• [27:23] Galway reads an excerpt from the title story, set in 1968 Corsica during the French student revolts.
• The excerpt captures the tender aftermath of an intimate night between two young men, Alfie and Felix, using keen sensory detail and emotional nuance:
  • “An aching tenderness cracked open inside me. His beauty appeared almost separate from him, a pure essence existing in the interplay between us, between his goodness and my cherishing of his goodness. I had never before desired to watch someone sleep.” (~30:00)

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Why Five Long Stories?

• Story length was organic—some stories expanded naturally into novella length, such as “The Islanders” (~65pp) and “The Lyrebird Spell” (~70pp), while others ended sooner.
• Practical publishing considerations also influenced the final count: “You have to hit a certain number... if it had ended at 20, there would have needed to be a six story, just without question.” (35:59)

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Thematic Time Capsules and Evolution

• Galway notes her books reflect the obsessions and wounds she experienced at the time of writing:
  • “I can even see a timestamp on this one...certain things like inner child work. I think anybody reading it could go, ‘Oh, she’s been to therapy, she’s done some inner child work.’ Which is great.” (37:29)
• Her first novel revealed an emerging obsession with metaphysics, a thread carried forward and heightened in this collection.

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What’s Next

• Galway is working on a novel expanding "The Lyrebird Spell."
  • Explores two girls in post-war rural Australia grappling with trauma and fantasy in the wake of familial dysfunction.
  • The new novel aims to deepen existing themes—childhood trauma, the logic of fantasy, cycles of violence—now through the eyes of an adolescent confronting existential questions.
• “She’s convinced that she’s not going to repeat the mistakes of her mother. And she of course does...You almost can’t completely run away from your family unless you face your family head on.” (42:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dark Whimsy and Pain:
  • “I think people who have maybe faced a great deal of darkness are some of the most enchanted people...maybe that is part of the response to it, to face the darkness and then go out into the world and see the beauty.” —Caitlin Galway [12:44]
• On Writing:
  • “I don’t think I write what pain or sadness or grief look like. I write what they feel like.” —Caitlin Galway [25:31]
• On the Open-Endedness of Stories:
  • “If you love these two characters, in my mind, it does work...Because I can’t accept lacking the closure that I want. For me, the outcome is what you want it to be. It’s just not written because that would be...a terrible ending for this story.” —Caitlin Galway [22:52]
• On Literary Obsessions:
  • “Write what obsesses you. Don’t worry if it obsesses anybody else. If it obsesses you, it will probably be fantastic.” —Holly Gattery [39:27]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:21 – Galway on how the collection organically formed
• 05:54 – Discussion of story order and development
• 08:45 – "The Wisp": Setting, summary, and themes
• 12:44 – Dark whimsy, enchantment and darkness
• 14:38 – Decisions on story geography and chronology, “The Islanders”
• 20:22 – Feeling-driven writing and lyrical style
• 27:23–31:50 – Galway reads from A Song for Wildcats
• 34:05 – Why five long stories?
• 37:29 – Stories as timestamps; thematic evolution
• 39:48 – Next project: expanding "The Lyrebird Spell" into a novel

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Tone and Takeaways

The interview is intimate, insightful, and occasionally playful—reflecting the warmth between host and author. Galway’s thoughtful responses underscore her commitment to organic, truth-seeking storytelling and her fascination with how personal wounds and philosophical obsessions birth unforgettable fiction. The result is a rich conversation not just about a book, but about the essence of creative process, the role of grief and healing, and the luminous, sometimes painful, undercurrents of literary art.

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Transcript

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[Holly Gattery]

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[Caitlin Galway]

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[Commercial Voice]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Holly Gattery]

Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I am your host Holly Gattery and I am thrilled to have join me today Caitlin Galway to talk about her really marvelous collection collection of stories, A Song for Wildcats, which came out in May 2025 with rare machines, which is an imprint of the wonderful Dunduran Press. Infatuation grows between two girls haunted by trauma in the enthralling wilderness of post war Australia. As they begin, as they spin disturbing fantasies and hatch a violent plan to escape their families, two young men in the Midst of the 1968 French student revolt navigate and at times resist the elusive nature of love and desire. An orphaned boy and his estranged aunt are thrown together on a quiet peninsula at the height of the troubles in Ireland, where their deeply rooted grief attracts the attention of shape shifting phantoms of war. Imbued with unique beauty, insight, resonance, the five long form stories in A Song for Wildcats are uncanny portraits of heartache and resilience from one of the country's most exciting authors. Caitlin Gowe is the author of the novel Bonavere Howell. Her work has been published in journals, anthologies and media outlets throughout Canada, and she has won or been nominated for numinous prizes. She lives in Toronto and she is here with us. Welcome, Caitlin. Hi.

[Caitlin Galway]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Holly Gattery]

It is such a pleasure to talk to you about these really remarkable stories. So I want to start with my standard starting question is, where did this book come from? What little nugget gave rise to this really beautiful and rangy collection?

[Caitlin Galway]

Well, I started, as most short story collections do, with the first story, but with that one, I didn't know that I was writing a collection yet. So it wasn't a decision to write a collection. It was. I had just finished my. I finished my novel. My novel had come out, was about to come out, and I just wanted to start a new story. And once that one was more or less done, you know, these ideas for other stories start to pop up. And so the next thing I knew, I was writing three different stories. I'm like, okay, well, I'm starting to see a collection maybe come. Come into existence slowly before me. But one of the. The strange things that happen, and I think that this is probably something that happens to a lot of short story writers, is that you notice connective tissue between the stories. And it definitely wasn't deliberate. It was sort of like my natural obsessions and my natural wounds and my natural, like, things that I just hadn't gotten over, things that I needed to heal and at that moment in time were finding interesting new ways to express themselves in all of these stories. And then, yeah, I just sort of became a collection that even though the stories are very different, they take place in very different areas of the world that kind of bounce around the world, and the characters are very different. And I like to think that they're all very distinct stories. They work really well together, I believe, because they share that connective tissue. They. They share my wounds and my obsessions in a. In a way that felt very natural. So, yeah, the story just sort of organically happened. And it was a really fun way for me to explore grief and healing and also philosophy and how I think that those are very inter. Interconnected.

[Holly Gattery]

So is the first story, or. Sorry, was the first story you wrote the first story in the collection? Because I have this theory that I can. And it's a theory that I've actually never done anything to be able to support, and I'm wrong.

[Caitlin Galway]

I love that. I love an unfounded theory.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, just a completely unfounded theory. This belief I have in myself that I can pick out what would have been someone's first story in a collection or their first essay in a collection of essays. And I've. I've actually never been right about anything. But I hold fast to this belief that, you know, just by the law of statistics, maybe. Maybe one time I might. And I thought the Islanders was the first one, but I don't know what was interesting.

[Caitlin Galway]

Well, the first one that I started was the Lar Birds Fell.

[Holly Gattery]

Okay.

[Caitlin Galway]

But it was not the first one that was finished. I did that, and it was very. It was a very. Yeah, Very, very rough. Just sort of like, figuring out that. That. That idea a little bit. And I put it aside for a while because I was. You know, you get frustrating. You're like, I'm gonna step away from it for a few months while I work on something else and that kind of thing. And then I wrote the Wisp, and the Wisp was the first story that was finished, beginning to end, the first complete story. And then. Oh, I think I went back and forth because they're. They're. Some of them are quite long. Most of them are quite long. So I wrote them at different times. But I would say that, like, the Wisp was the first one that was finished. The Larry Bird spell. I went back. I went back to it again, and again I would finish another story, and then I would go back to the Lyrebridge Bell, and there would be, like, another layer that I would add to it. And I think part of it is that. I mean, I'm sure this. This collection took me a long time to write, longer than I thought it would, partly because of. It was written during COVID and that was a time. So there was all of this time to grow as a person and become obsessed with new things. And then I would go back to certain stories, and I would think, well, I like this, but there's this whole other element that I think would be really fascinating if I just wove that in. And so I would return to stories. They were all sort of written at the same time and at different times. I think it's. It. It would be difficult to say that other. Other than that first one. Like, the order is just completely all over the. All over the map.

[Holly Gattery]

Well, I'm interested. I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit more about the wisp. Because, you know, we start. I mean, the very first paragraph. The horses watched as the cab passed, their black smoke manes blowing over the bright swells of their eyes, their legs like brittle stick stems of clay. It was late October 1933, and the drought had swept its indiscriminate site across the once sun honeyed fields. First of all, like, what an opening. But yeah, it's gorgeous. But I can remember thinking 1933. Fascinating. And I think that maybe for. I mean, not that, I mean every time period can be made fascinating, but the fact that this collection spans not only geography but time as well. Um, I was using the wisp as perhaps the jumping off point because we're talking about these stories and I realize our listeners have no idea what we're talking about. If you could tell our listeners maybe a little bit about the wisp and then talk about where, you know, maybe to the best of your ability, maybe there is no answer to this and it's just what happens during the creative process. But the decision to have like these, these stories move around in time and geography so much. So starting with the wisp telling us a little bit about that and then speaking about the. Let's call it the legginess of this.

[Caitlin Galway]

I like that. Well, yeah, the wisp is. Yeah, it's set in 1933 and it's about this. This young woman named Tessa whose childhood friend has, has died. And she returns to her. Her town, north. North Tarrytown, kind of colloquially called Sleepy Hollow. It is the location of Sleepy Hollow. And I think they've officially changed it to Sleepy Hollow. They're just, they're leaning into it now, which is great. So she goes back and it's a very haunted time in the world. It's a very haunted time in that country. And she's. Yeah, she's a young woman who is very haunted by her past in a complicated, very queer relationship with her best friend. She doesn't want to be any of the things that she is. Most of the queer characters that I write, their queerness is not an issue for them at all. This is the one girl who's having a real, real time with it. She's not happy with who she is. And she is very.

Yeah, she's very, very reluctant to face the consequences of the friendship she had with this girl Sabrina, who has died. So going back to her hometown to mourn Sabrina but also figure out how she died. Because this is the one story I would say it leans the most into a very dark, not fairy tale quality, but like a little bit of a hint of that. And she gets home and wants to figure out what actually happened to Sabrina. And it's not a major concern for most people. Sabrina was an outcast. It's the depression. There really is just. There are no resources really to put into somebody that the town doesn't care about to begin with. And as she's trying to figure out what happened to her friend.

Just strange things happen. There's a strange girl who has appeared in the town, and there's a blue light that Tessa, the protagonist, keeps seeing, and she keeps trying to catch it, and she can't catch it. She can't pin it down. She can't make sense of the situation. And ultimately, it is about grief and the inability to make sense of grief, to find any kind of logic and then just move past it. Then all Tessa wants to do is. Is pin things down and give them meaning and logic and order so that she can move on. And this story is, at its heart about how that is not possible with grief. You can. You can grow and grief can become something else. It can become compassion and wisdom, but you can't assign it perfect logic and then put it behind you completely. And so that is what the story is exploring.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, I loved it as soon as I saw the wisp, because I have too many children. I was like, oh, like the wisp, like in Disney's Brave. So I was like, oh, I know.

[Caitlin Galway]

But, yeah, it leans into that. There's a lot of folklore that the story plays with and the will of the wisps. That is one of the. Yeah, no, you're completely right. It is that.

[Holly Gattery]

Well, it's what I call. I don't know if this is a real genre, but in my head, it's a genre that I really love because I consider the work of Peter S. Beagle in this Last Unicorn, or. Oh, I'm reading one of his books right now. It's terrible. I can't remember. Anyways, I call the genre Dark Whimsy. That.

[Caitlin Galway]

Oh, I like that this is a dark whimsy story. Absolutely.

[Holly Gattery]

Yes. Yeah. And I'm. This. It's. It's not, like, dark in the sense of, like, horror or anything like that. It's just there's, like, that constant threat that I think so many of us feel who are enchanted with the world. Like, I consider myself enchanted with the world, but that doesn't mean that it's all, like, sunshine and butterflies. It's. I'm always aware of this darkness in it, too. And I'm. I mean, part of the darkness in a romantic sense is perhaps part of the enchantment, but. But only in a very distant realm. Romantic sense, because I never actually want to come across that darkness. And I liked how this story makes you, like, look really closely at the darkness.

[Caitlin Galway]

I appreciate that. And I, I, I like that. I consider myself somebody who is a very similar outlook. Where I am, I am absolutely enthralled with and enchanted by the world around me. But there is that, there is that sense of, of, of darkness that, that follows that. And I think that, that those can be really connected for a lot of people. I think people who have maybe faced a great deal of darkness are some of the most enchanting, or not enchanting, but enchanted people. And maybe that is part of the response to it, to face the darkness and then go out into the world and see the beauty. And you have that balance, how beautiful the world is and how dark it can be, and always sort of living with those both in you at all times. And I think that this book, if it could be defined by anything, would maybe be. That is that, that is what I keep hearing from people is, oh, so this is such an enchanting book. It's also so dark that sometimes I had to put it down. Things like that. I'm like, interesting. So I think that the stories reflect that because that's my perspective of the world as well.

[Holly Gattery]

What a great answer. Not just because it agrees and aligns with me, but because it is a great answer. Not just because it reinforces my beliefs. It's just a great answer. So I just want to circle back because I did, you know, the worst thing an interviewer can do, and that's that I did ask you two questions at once. But I'd love for you to talk about that lagginess about moving throughout geography and time. Because, of course, like, when some people write stories, it's all like, oh, in one town, you know, sunshine, sketches of a little town, one time, one place. And then there's, you know, other decisions, you know, where people are all over the place with stories, or let's say, like all over a country. Um, but like, you move around the world and throughout time. Now, was this something that you sat down, unconsciously thought, I'm going to do this, or it's just this, like, the stories are coming. You're like, well, this is where this is set, and this is when this is set. And I guess this is what we're doing.

[Caitlin Galway]

Very much the latter. There was no decision that was made. It's a very, very instinctive. I would just follow how the story appeared to me. One example would be the islanders, which is a story about.

A young boy and his aunt. They're thrown together on the Irish peninsula or an Irish peninsula during the Troubles and are coming to grips with their grief, but also bumping up against each other constantly. They're grieving in very contrasting ways and they cannot get along. And then you have sort of these Irish folklore clubs, creatures or folklore spirits who appear in very, very grounded way. They kind of just appear as like, you know, two men in an apartment and two strange girls on the beach. But it gets stranger and stranger. And trying to figure out that idea and where it should come, where it should be placed and when it should be placed. I think it all fits together, but it started out just as abstract as possible. I had no idea what I was doing. I saw these two people in my mind, but I didn't know where they were or when they were. I only knew that I wanted there to be a constant sense of violence. I wanted the violence to just be permeating everything around them. And they needed to be trying to in some way get away from the violence. And that is what led to the place and the time. Because initially the violence was a person. I thought, well, maybe they're fleeing a violent person. But I couldn't see that person. And the person became more and more abstract until the person was just the environment, the person was the air. And like they're not trying to escape someone, they are surrounded by violence. It's inescapable. And I had some idea of how modern I wanted it to be. I knew I didn't want to be writing it in my own time. I never really do. But I also didn't see it as being a very, very old fashioned story. So I thought, well, 60s, 70s, 80s, something like that. Where in the world could these people be in a place that would have this vast landscape that I'm picturing? Just, they're so isolated and I really want it to just be them on their own, sort of in the middle of nowhere, just isolating themselves from the world and isolating themselves from each other and isolating themselves from their own natures really, because they just shut down. And it became what could only be the 1960s and the 1970s in Ireland because of the Troubles. And that's when I knew. I'm like, well, that's it. This, it's the. The air is just, you know, on fire with violence and they can't escape it. And so they are hiding away in this little house by the sea to get away from it and it's just destroying them. And once that happens, then it's an obsession with the place. I went to Ireland and I just walked around and was completely in love with the place. But. But before that, there was no decision. It sort of just has to organically become what. What it is. And then once I know it's, it feels inevitable. It feels like, well, it couldn't have been in anywhere. But at this place in this time.

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[Caitlin Galway]

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[Caitlin Galway]

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[Caitlin Galway]

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[Caitlin Galway]

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[Holly Gattery]

What you're saying is making me think about not only my own experience, but talking to other writers about how so much of the writing process is just thinking and. Or you even, like, just like thinking your way through things when you're on a walk, when you're washing dishes, when you should be doing. Whatever other work you should be doing is thinking, which is usually thinking about these things, and they're. It's very inescapable. It feels like it just is everywhere. So I do want to ask you about.

Your writing style, which is just lovely and lyrical. And I'm going to ask you to read so our listeners can get a little bit of a sense of your really remarkable, remarkable, and I'd say singular style. I've never read anything like it. And I think that, you know, some stories are plot driven, some stories are character driven. And when I was done your collection, I was thinking to myself, what would I call this? Because neither of those two work? And I would call it feeling driven. And what you just said about, you know, just. You have this feeling you want to convey. It's like a very poetic sentiment because that's. That's what, you know, to me, at least, poetry is. It's like you have a feeling, you want to convey it. So it's not always rooted in something very specific. It could be like seeing. Yes, yes. Maybe seeing these vision of these two men or these two girls or something. But it's the feeling that you get when you're trying to convey that is. Or when you think of them that you're trying to convey. And that is what I would say my reader interpretation of this is it felt so feeling driven. And I think part of that is this really poetic and lyrical language that you have in. And it's not affected. It's not like that. You know, sometimes if, you know, you read certain things, you're like, wow, this person's really trying for this.

[Caitlin Galway]

Yeah, they're really, really trying to show how poetic they are. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I definitely don't think that's what I do.

[Holly Gattery]

No, you do. Not at all. I mean, the first story is Song for Wildcats is such a gorgeous example. It's just this really, you know, the conversation is what conversation would be, you know, like, the conversation between these two young men is not affected at all. They are speaking as they would speak, the very short sentences.

Just, you know, the. The organic cadence of a sentence. But the narration is what is really lyrical and beautiful. And I would also say fragmented, which reflects the character in My opinion, the. The main. The main protagonist of this story, and, you know, you don't really know what's going on with him. When you start, I assume. I don't want to give anything away, but I assumed one thing, and then it turned out that he. I thought he was exiled for one reason. Then it turned out he was away for a completely different horrible reason. And it all unfolded in this gorgeous. Just dripping with pain and beauty. And, you know, I was really hoping for these two. These two guys. I was hoping for a certain outcome, but it was like. I knew it was impossible, but I.

[Caitlin Galway]

Was hoping to tell you in my. In my heart of hearts. For anyone who reads the story, if you love these two characters, in my mind, it. It does work. Like it could be the thing you want to happen does happen, because I can't. I'm someone who, like, if I don't get what I want from a TV show, I. I tell myself it's not real. So you can just believe that it worked out the way you wanted it to work out, and that's as real as. As the story they gave you. Because I can't accept lacking the closure that I want. For me.

The outcome is what you want it to be. It's just not written because that would be. I feel it would just be a terrible ending for this story. But. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. I actually really agree. I think.

Without intending it to be that way, it's just the way that. That the writing comes to me where.

Even if it's lyrical, even if it's poetic, and I would hope that it is. I definitely have a poet friend who always tells me I'm really a poet, like you're a poet writing prose. So I really like that. But.

It'S sort of like the way that I feel has to be the way that I feel, or when I'm trying to imagine how the characters feel, which is always often on some level, sort of how you feel as the writer. I want it to like. I want the language to be necessary. So even if it's poetic, even if it's lyrical, it's not unnecessary. And I know that with lyrical writing, some people can say, well, just get to the point. And I go, well, this is the point, though, how this character is feeling. I'm not going to tell you how they feel. I'm going to create the feeling.

I know that there are some readers who have told me that the writing is so close to the characters and their feeling. You're so inside of their mind. And Inside of their feelings. That one person told me it just evokes so much of their own pain that they loved the book, but they had to put it down every, like, 10 or 15 minutes and then pick it up again, like, just so they could breathe. And I've had people say that the lyricism makes. It creates a little bit of a distance. Someone said once it created a little bit of a distance. And he said, you know, it wasn't a negative at all. He just said it looked that there was.

It was a lyrical approach to pain. And I remember kind of thinking about this. Two very different responses, because you're going to get different responses from people. And they were both positive. So I was like, okay, I'll take it. But I remember thinking about what that could mean. And I thought, I don't think I write what pain or sadness or grief look like. I write what they feel like. And I think that's probably what that is.

A person who is suffering from grief isn't thinking about how they look in their grief, like how gritty their grief looks to other people. They're in a sort of strange, almost otherworldly place that doesn't feel quite real. When you're really, really deep, deep in your pain, it almost feels like another world. And I think that's sort of the otherworldly quality there is that really, really tremendous, enormous pain and enormous grief doesn't feel like this planet. It feels like another world. And so there's that ethereal, lyrical quality. Not because it's trying to create a distance between the feeling and the reality, but because that is sort of, I think, the headspace that you're in when you are in the thick of it.

[Holly Gattery]

Well, I felt that the lyrical quality was a natural reflection of the. The way that feelings work. You know, feelings don't over explain themselves. Feelings don't rationalize themselves. Feelings don't take a step outside of themselves. Feelings just are what they are in the moment. I mean, I think it was Robert Perse again. Oh, I'm saying his name wrong. In Zen, in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this says something about reality being the state before intellect, intellectualization. There we go. So, like, the, you know, reality is what happens before you overthink it. And that's what these. These stories felt like, is they were just in their most unfettered and unfiltered state. And I was going to say raw, but then I stopped myself, because that gives the feeling that they might be like there's a unpolished quality to them. And your Words are incredibly polished, so I didn't want to use that particular word. So with that in mind, I was wondering if you would read to us from your. One of your stories so our audience can get a little amuse. Boosh of your.

[Caitlin Galway]

Absolutely. I'll read from the title story, A Song for Wildcats. And just for some context. So this story is set in 1968 in Corsica, during the student revolts that were breaking out across France. And it is my response to the symposium by Plato, which you do not have to have read read it. It's great. You don't have to have read it to understand this at all. It's not about the symposium, but when I was reading the symposium, I loved it. I thought it was so fun that I kept thinking, oh, I want to write about my feelings on what I'm reading in some capacity. And then it becomes a completely different animal. But it's this journey for a character named Alfie. He has experienced something very, very difficult. And he is in this place. He's in this place that he's never been to before, kind of as an attempt to get away from that. And he ends up falling head over heels in love with one of the first people he meets when he gets there, which he hates, because he doesn't want to deal with any of that. A boy named. A young man named Felix, who is heavily involved in the student revolts. And the story follows their friendship. It follows potential blooming romance between them. But Alfie is obsessed with the metaphysics of love and violence. He wants to define love. He wants to understand what it means. He wants to know what violence actually means, how they're connected, which in his mind is inextricably. He doesn't think they can be disconnected. And for that he keeps. Or for that reason, he keeps pushing this friend away while at the same time pulling them closer because he loves them, loves them. And this scene right here is the morning after they have fallen asleep together. Nothing's happened, but they had a very complicated conversation, sort of starting out about philosophy or just, you know, life. And the experience that Alfie had before he came to Corsica, the thing he's trying to get away from, which is rooted in violence, that has started to emerge, that emerged in this conversation just. Just enough that now he is really worried about what his friend knows. And, yeah, this is just sort of him waking up and reckoning with what he has revealed. The night before, turning onto my side, I found Felix lying beside me. I fell stone still. He was asleep, serene in my disheveled cardigan, squeezing my hand to his chest. How had this happened? I scanned the room, vaguely sequencing the previous night. A quivery nervousness set in. What had I told him? Had he meant to fall asleep here? Or would he be mortified to find himself in my bed? My chest lay thin and damp over my heartbeat, my breaths so shallow I thought I might faint. And then he murmured, still asleep. I looked at him, curled so soundly, clutching my hand. The freckle by his mouth burned my retina like the fine point fire of sunlight through a magnifying glass. An aching tenderness cracked open inside me. His beauty appeared almost separate from him, a pure essence existing in the interplay between us, between his goodness and my cherishing of his goodness. I had never before desired to watch someone sleep. The path connecting me to other people had been shrouded, winding. Yet I watched him sleep as one watches a river or a rare bird. I reached out to stroke the hair from his face and started at myself. He could not possibly have intended to sleep next to me. We had passed out in wine headed exhaustion, and he had searched for my hand in the night as he dreamed of someone else. Perhaps it was pity, too, for the onset of my strobing memories, or guilt after prying into the affair, its unspoken strangeness always lurking on the leeward side of my mind. I slipped my hand free, moving to the creaky wicker chair in the corner. I sank into myself and waited for the distance to accumulate, for the floor to stretch into separate hemispheres. It did not. The easy tide of Felix's breathing carried across the few feet between us. I leaned forward in the chair, sitting at the edge. My hand, so recently nestled in solace, tingled with absence. I traced my palm as though he had left etchings of his prints. What if I was wrong and it had been my anchorage he sought in the drift of sleep? What if desire could flourish bloodlessly without suffering or defacement? I stood and lifted the window sash higher and dipped my head into the clean morning air. I looked back at Felix, resting peacefully in my sheets. The breeze woke my skin, tasting of sea mist and salt. The waves hushed along the harbor, and in them I could hear a hidden language calling to me in tumbling whispers I could almost understand. Thank you, thank you.

[Holly Gattery]

I still remember when I first read that line about.

His his skin over his heart and it being wet and I can't remember the exact word now you just read it. But I remember being like I can picture his bony little chest, young man, chest. You know what I Mean, like, oh.

[Caitlin Galway]

Yeah, I think he's 20 years old. So they, they, they still have that little, little man's chest.

[Holly Gattery]

I'm sorry. To any 20 year olds listening. Yeah, I know you're adults. I know you're adults. You're adults. I apologize. You're amazing. Of course, of course. I'm 44, so, like, anyone in their 20s is a baby to me. That's all. But like, I, I know, I know what, that I could see it so beautifully. And you said it in like five words. You know, it was like a very small description that opened an entire chasm of feeling, which is just so beautifully done. So, listeners, that is what I am talking about. So, Caitlin, I have two other questions for you. The first is why five long stories? And I'm asking you to rationalize something that maybe doesn't have any logical rationalization. Again, we might be going back to just a feeling at this point, which is a perfectly acceptable answer. But I'm really interested in it because, you know, we have. Let's look at other contemporary Canadian, you know, writers. We have, you know, Katherine Bush, who had, you know, one novella and then a few short stories in her recent short story collections, Skin. Aaron Croyder, who Rebel Children was longer stories as well. And then, you know, you have this really cool writer named Holly Gattery who did a whole bunch of flash fiction. You know, I've heard of her. A whole collection of flash fiction. You know, there's. There. And then we have, you know, collections that are more, you know, standard. When I say standard short stories. So why five long, short. Five long short stories. You know what I mean?

[Caitlin Galway]

Yeah, yeah. So. Well, I mean, instinct and logic, I think both came into play there. The, the length of each story was organic.

Ended when it ended. Some stories like the Lyrebird Spell and the Islanders, I mean, islanders is about 65 pages.

[Holly Gattery]

It's a novella.

[Caitlin Galway]

And the lyrebird spell is 70, 71 pages. So those, those had so much elasticity. Every, everything kept. I just kept pulling more and more and more and they kept going on and on and on. Not in a draggy way. The story just had more to say. Whereas Heatstroke, which is another story, the second story in the collection is about maybe 19, 20 pages. And it ended when it ended. So that all happened very naturally. The logical part of it was knowing how many pages needed to be in the book. And for a short story collection. Well, I mean, for anything, you, you have to hit a certain number. They, I mean, sending a manuscript that's 150 pages, for the most part. 150, 170, 180. They're going to tell you you need to add another story. You need to add two more stories. I knew that that was there, that was waiting for me if I didn't hit at least 200, 210. So those are the pages you have to hit. So I. I knew.

That it was going to be five stories only when I saw how long. The last story I wrote was that, like, the last story I wrote was a song for Wildcats, the title story. And I didn't know it was going to be the last one until I saw how long it was because it's about 45 pages. If it had ended at 20, there would have needed to be a six story, just without question. But then I saw, oh, my God, I'm at page 38, 39, and it's not done yet, so. Or something like that. I'm like, I'm. This is the last one. They're not going to want me to send anything, probably any more than this, but definitely not any fewer than five.

[Holly Gattery]

So we have a combination of feeling and. Just logistics.

[Caitlin Galway]

Yeah, just logistics. Just logistics. Just realizing, okay, this story is going to get me to at least 220, and then that's good. If they want another one, they do, but they might not. So I'm going to start. I'm going to go with this. Yeah, that's all that it was. But the length of the stories themselves was very. Just organic, just letting the story kind of run its natural course.

[Holly Gattery]

Which reminds me and draws my mind back to something you said earlier about the stories are a reflection of the. Of what was consuming you and, you know, the wounds and the tissue, the connective tissue between them. And I meant to respond to that, saying that I love how, again, I love it because it reflects what I believe. So it's such an egotistical thing to say, but here I go, that I'm convinced that for me at least, and I've known this for some other writers, that our stories, our books are kind of timestamps or time capsules of who we were at the time and what consumes us at the time, and we would never be able to create that again. When you've written a novel before this, does. Does it ever amaze you? Do you ever look back, even at this, at this book now is. I mean, yes, it. It just came out this year. We're talking in 2025. But of course, it was written way before that. Do you ever look Back and go, how did I do that?

[Caitlin Galway]

I don't know if I've had a sort of a response that's quite like, oh, how did I do that? But more.

I can see a timestamp. I can even see a timestamp on this one because.

Even going back through it to do readings, and back in probably April, maybe even earlier, just deciding what the reading sections are going to be, if I'm going to go and I'm going to do a reading, I'm going to read an excerpt. I've got to go through the stories and find the best one. So I ended up going through everything again and noticing certain things like inner child work. I think anybody reading it could go.

[Holly Gattery]

Oh, she's been to therapy, she's done.

[Caitlin Galway]

Some inner child work. Which is great because I was doing that while I was writing the collection. And I can see that being reflected to a certain extent in the characters kind of communicating in on some way or feeling some presence of who they used to be when they were a child. And that being a healing element.

My first novel is definitely the first time I think my obsession with metaphysics became really apparent. Someone even mentioned it in a review, which I loved. She was the only one who mentioned this in review. And I was like, I feel so sane. Where she called it a metaphysical mystery, which it is, and the. It's not advertised as that at all. And it's definitely something that you don't have to know anything about or even recognize while you're reading it. But with my first book there was this obsession with what defines violence, what defines grief. And this come to much greater prominence in my writing. I'm much more self aware of it too. But I can look back at that book and go, this is where you really start getting.

So obsessed with these questions that the characters are obsessed with the questions. And it's clear, I think, to the reader in some way that this obsession is taking over. And you can kind of, I can timestamp that. I'm like, this is where we really start to see this.

[Holly Gattery]

So for our listeners who write, perhaps this is another wonderful reminder that we can take from Caitlin, who has this beautiful book. A Song for Wildcats is just write what obsesses you. Don't worry if it obsesses anybody else. If it obsesses you, it will probably be fantastic. So Caitlin, my last question for you is, what are you working on now?

[Caitlin Galway]

I'm working on a new novel. So if anyone reads the collection, and I hope you do, and I hope you like it, the last story is the Larybird Spell and it's a novella, but it is part one of a novel. And I'm like to say that I'm almost done. I would like to. I think many writers can understand that feeling where you think, oh my gosh, in three months this is going to be done. This is really going to be done. And you cut to three months later and it's not. I'm hoping that doesn't happen. I'm hoping it's done. I've set a deadline. It is a novel about.

Yeah, just an extension of this novella. And you mentioned it a little bit when you gave sort of an overview of the book. It's these two girls who are living in Australia in the late 40s and they live in very, very like out of the way rural Victoria in the middle of nowhere. And they have very strange, very problematic families. And it's this very intense bond and fantasy world that they've created that gets very dark. And the story leaves that Part one. This novella has a lot of those elements there and it explores metaphysics, it explores what defines reality and what defines love and violence. And those themes are played with, but sort of through the eyes of children. The two main characters are 12 going on 13. And how would grappling with those huge questions look through the eyes of precocious but, you know, precocious children? But they're children. And so it becomes this escapism and this blending of their worlds with the real world, with their fantasy world, because creating a fantasy is actually more logical and rational or it makes more sense than to a child than, you know, a mother who doesn't love her child. That doesn't make sense to a 12 year old. My mom doesn't love me. Doesn't make sense. There has to be another reason. So they create kind of a fantasy world around that. And the story takes off from that and really focuses only on the main character in a different place when she's a little older. And her coming to terms with everything that has happened in the first part of the story in the novella and gets really dark and still plays with metaphysics, but launches into.

Dark existentialism. I thought that would be fun. She's 15 now. Existentialism seemed like the right philosophical approach for a teenager or an adolescent. And the cycle of violence and the cycle of abuse because she's convinced that she's not going to repeat the mistakes of her mother. And she of course does. Because you almost can't completely run away from your family unless you Face your family head on. If you don't face the cycle that it's chasing after you, you just sort of go, I'm not going to look at it. It's not going to get me then it's going to get you that it's that type of thing. And her learning how to recognize what happened to her so that she can recover and actually escape this cycle that has been, you know, that's chasing after her, basically. And yeah, it's, it's, it's darker than, I mean it's dark, but it's. I think it's also very fun to, to read. I'm hoping that people will find that if I can convince a publisher to publish my madness. A lot of, a lot of the same qualities that have been put into a song for Wildcats where it is that balance, like we said before, a balance of enchanted, enchanted worldview and a reckoning with the darkness of the world.

[Holly Gattery]

I love that. And I'm all here for precocious teenagers. And when you're talking, it would reminded me a little bit of Robert Penner's beautiful book the Dark King swallows the World, which was published with Radiant Press, which is a 12 year old named Nora being put in the middle of a war zone in England. And it's kind of like Labyrinth meets the Secret of Nim. All this stuff I always talk about, that sounds great.

[Caitlin Galway]

Yeah, it's amazing that.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I mean your books sound completely different. But I'm always here for precocious teenagers. And I can always remember one of my favorite but least favorite responses is when a reader goes, oh, this, this 12 year old, this 13 year old is too mature. They'd never, they'd never say that. I'm like, have you ever lived with a 12 and 13 year old? I have. They absolutely, they absolutely are that mature. And they're also absolutely children. These two things exist. This ability to live in this complete fantasy world and be insanely mature at the same time exists simultaneously all the time. And I'm always, I enjoy seeing that so much brought to life because I think in my brain that cusp of adulthood was one of my favorite times to be alive and also one of the darkest times to be alive. And I love reading people who can capture that. And so I'm really looking forward to reading your book and with. I have every faith someone will snap it up. And when they do, I hope you come back and join me again.

[Caitlin Galway]

It would be such a delight to do so.

[Holly Gattery]

Thank you so Caitlin, thank you for joining me and everyone. We've been talking to Caitlin Galway about her really wonderful collection of five long stories, A Song for Wildcats, which was published with Rare Machines, which is an imprint of Dum Duran Press. Talk to you soon, Caitlin.

[Caitlin Galway]

Bye.