Yrsa Daley-Ward was born in 1989 in Chorley, Lancashire. She is a model, poet and writer who has won the 2019 PEN Ackerley Prize for her 2018 memoir The Terrible. In 2020, Daley-Ward co-wrote Black is King, Beyoncé’s musical film and visual album.
Her debut novel, The Catch, is a roman d’analyse focusing on three women: a mother and her twin daughters. In what is described by the judges as “an extraordinary shape-shifting, genre-defying work,” the novel tells an intricate story of two estranged twins who were separated aged eight after their mother disappeared into the Thames. Their careers, their backgrounds and the innerworkings of their minds could not be any more different. Yet they are connected by one thing: the unexplained reappearance of their mother – or someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to their mother. The kaleidoscopic story shifts between each twins’ perspective making for a vivid and energetic story. Reality blends with elements of the occult and sci-fi in an intriguing exploration of our relationship to ourselves, our loved ones and our past and future.
Zuzanna Lachendro: The Goldsmiths Prize was set up to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”. What can an “innovative” approach offer the reader (and writer) that a more conventional novel might not?
Yrsa Daley-Ward: What makes writing so seductive to me is that I come here to rewild after all the rules and regulations of life. I want to be surprised by my work. Innovation creates space for this. For the reader, it can mirror the way real life feels – fragmented, nonlinear, and contradictory, rather than offering a well-known arc. For the writer, it allows you to take risks, to abandon the idea of what a novel is supposed to look like, and to follow a more jagged, instinctive rhythm. It is jazz! It gives you permission to break things open and see what happens. Sometimes there are hidden heat points or unexpected bleeds. I love not knowing what will happen, both as a reader and a writer.
Tell me about a piece of art, literature or music that was important to you when writing The Catch.
I was listening to a lot of Nosaj Thing and Darkstar while writing; their music has that mix of melancholy, grit and inevitability that suited the twins’ story. In terms of literature, Beloved has always hovered in the background for me, not in subject matter, but in the way Toni Morrison bends time, memory, and the haunting presence of family. All this gave me a kind of permission to trust strangeness and atmosphere.
The book is described as a “genre-defying work of fiction”, at times reading like popular fiction, literary fiction and science fiction. How would you describe the genre of your debut novel?
Oh, I love that! Even after publication and promotion, I am not sure of the words to use. Let’s say it’s a hybrid… part psychological mystery, part speculative fiction, part family drama. I wasn’t thinking too much about genre while writing; I was learning, lusting, wishing, thinking about atmosphere, language, love, grief, and obsession. Genre came later, when I was asked to categorise it. I suppose it lives in the borderlands, where fiction feels slightly unstable.
Colours seem to play a big role in The Catch. Clara often mentions blue; Serene is orange, and when she grew up, “there appeared a new set of colours with which to paint”. Tell me more about this.
Colour is another language in the book. Clara sees blue everywhere. It’s her melancholy and interior world, which trips her up, telling on her over and over. Serene radiates an orange, restless, and almost dangerous brightness. Colours let me map emotions without naming them directly or forcing them into a single space. I think we are too large for that. As the story unfolds, new shades emerge because identity isn’t static; it keeps tinting and shifting depending on who or what is present.
Throughout the novel, there are some unique approaches to form: lists, letters, and paragraph breaks mid-sentence. Would you say your experience writing in different styles, like poetry, has influenced you in being more experimental with the book? If so, how?
Absolutely. I enjoy dancing, playing, and making shapes! Poetry teaches you that a single line break can change the whole meaning of a text. Without necessarily meaning to, I subconsciously carried that over into prose, using white space to reflect the instability of the twins’ lives. When form is fractured, it tells its own story. I don’t separate my poetry and fiction. Even if I tried, they would leak into each other.
The Catch is a book within a book. While reading it, we get chapters from Clara’s newly published debut Evidence. You also have a moment where you almost “break the fourth wall” mentioning a re-write of Evidence titled The Catch that would focus on the twins. What was the process behind this? Did you intend them to be one book or were they two stories that merged into one?
At first, Evidence was its own text. It was Clara’s attempt to write her way through the loss of her mother. I soon realised the real story was in the gaps, in what Clara couldn’t say or didn’t know. So the books collapsed into each other. It got very meta, as I felt into all my characters and realised they might be ancestors. (I know, I know I’m getting weird!) I wish I could explain in more concrete terms. But that doubling, that mirroring, felt true to how memory and trauma work, revising and rewriting themselves until you can’t tell what the real story is.
At the beginning of The Catch the reader joins Clara at an event where her book is described as “autofiction”. Would you say there are auto-fictional elements of your life in The Catch?
There are emotional truths, certainly. How could anyone keep themselves all the way out of a novel? I’m so very interested in how we mythologise our own families, how we retell our histories until they become something else. I drew on the intensity of my own upbringing, the sense of loss and longing, and grief. Grief! Still, the characters and events are inventions. Autofiction is a useful word, but I think all fiction has the self somewhere in its bloodstream.
The twins spend the entire novel trying to figure out the mystery of their mother’s return at a great cost while also altering the way all of their lives turn out. Yet you end the novel by saying “and that is the thing about destiny. She comes and it comes and we come around”. What is the importance of destiny in the book? Is destiny something that we can’t influence?
Destiny in The Catch is both a weight and a choice. The twins can’t change their origins, but they can decide how to carry them. I don’t believe destiny is fixed. I think it bends with every decision, every refusal or “yes”, or moment of courage. The line about destiny “coming around” is a reminder that it’s happening in us, constantly.
Why do we need the Goldsmiths Prize?
We need the Goldsmiths Prize because it rewards risk. Literature evolves when someone dares to break the frame, and a prize that celebrates this is essential. It signals to both writers and readers that experimentation is not fringe; it’s more precious and important than that.
What past British or Irish novel deserves a retrospective Goldsmiths Prize? Why?
I vote Sexing The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson; it’s so strange, sprawling and wild. I don’t know whether I’d call this historical fiction, fantasy, fairytale or neither, but it’s dreamy and radical. I was hooked!
“The Catch” by Yrsa Daley-Ward is published by Merky Books. The winner of the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize is announced on 5 November. Read more interviews with the shortlisted writers here.
Further reading: The art of writing about India]
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