This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Missoula, Montana-based writer Brian Buckbee, author of We Should All Be Birds (Tin House Books; Zando Projects), written with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, who joins them for the first half of their conversation.
About the book:
On a spring evening in Montana, Brian Buckbee encounters an injured baby pigeon. Heartbroken after the loss of the love of his life and increasingly isolated by a mysterious illness that overtook him while trekking through Asia, Brian is unaware that this bird—who he names Two-Step—will change his life. Brian takes in Two-Step, and more injured birds, eventually transforming his home into a madcap bird rehabilitation and rescue center. As Brian and Two-Step grow closer, an unexpected kinship forms. But their paths won’t converge forever: as Two-Step heals and finds love, Brian’s condition worsens, and with his friend’s release back into the world looming closer, Brian must decide where this story leaves him.
We Should All Be Birds follows Brian, unable to read or write due to a never-ending headache, as he dictates the end of his old life—as an adventurer, an iconoclastic university instructor, and endurance athlete—through his relationship with a pigeon that comes to define his present. Limited to dictation, Brian teams up with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, an editor who channels the details of his personal history to the pages. Raw and perceptive, delirious and devastating, We Should All Be Birds is an unflinching exploration of chronic illness, grief, connection, and the spectacular beauty of the natural world—and the humble pigeon. The surprising, heartwarming relationship between man and bird provides insight into what it means to love, to suffer, and to “never forget, even for a second, how big it all is.”
About the authors:
Brian Buckbee lives in Missoula, Montana. He is co-founder of The 406 Writers’ Workshop. His stories have appeared in The Sun, The Georgia Review, The Mid-American Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.
Carol Ann Fitzgerald is a former editor at The Sun and The Oxford American. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Ploughshares, The Oxford American, The Sun, The OA Book of Great Music Writing, and elsewhere. She lives in Chapel Hill.
Mentioned in this conversation:
Birdy, a film directed by Alan Parker and starring Matthew Modine and Nicolage Cage, released in 1984
The 406 Writers’ Workshop in Missoula, Montana
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic encephalomyelitis)
Freytag’s Pyramid, or Triangle
Brian Buckbee recommends:
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Pantheon Books)
The Blue Guide to Indiana by Michael Martone (F2C)
Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan (Chronicle Books)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Vintage Books)
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (Penguin Classics; Penguin Random House)
“Shipping Out,” an essay by David Foster Wallace, originally published in Harper’s magazine and collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (Back Bay Books)
Carol Ann Fitzgerald recommends:
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Picador USA)
The Waves by Virginia Woolf (Mariner Books)
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (W. W. Norton & Company)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage Books)
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (Penguin Classics; Penguin Random House)
The Fall by Albert Camus (Vintage Books)
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Random House)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (Vintage Books)
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (Picador USA)
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Lauren Korn recommends:
We Should All Be Birds by Brian Buckbee, with Carol Ann Fitzgerald (Tin House Books; Zando Projects) Note: The audiobook is narrated by Brian and is also fantastic!
This review of We Should All Be Birds by Sarah Aswell (The Pulp)
The Peregrine by J. A. Baker (New York Review of Books Classics)
Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven (Spiegel & Grau)
The Year of the Horses by Courtney Maum (Tin House Books; Zando Projects)
The Salt Stones by Helen Whybrow (Milkweed Editions)
Field Notes, a writing workshop and podcast series, productions of the Montana Natural History Center (the first twenty-five years are collected in a book, too!)
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Fact & Fiction, an independent bookstore located in the heart of downtown Missoula, Montana, providing books for all ages and supporting the literary community in Montana and beyond. More information can be found at factandfictionbooks.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. A hat-tip to Humanities Montana for supporting this program since 2008.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
