Will Cathcart is an American writer, journalist, and war correspondent. A Charleston native and former media advisor to the president of Georgia, he has covered Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine, trailed ISIS fighters through the Pankisi Gorge, documented Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and chronicled the unsolved killing of a CIA station chief. His work has appeared in CNN, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Air Mail, Literary Hub, Garden & Gun, USA Today, and VICE. A former managing editor of the Georgian Journal and the Charleston Mercury, he has also served as senior advisor to a digital diplomacy task force countering Russian propaganda. He has worked with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to raise awareness and funding for research. In television, he has consulted and produced for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, National Geographic’s Drugs, Inc., and ITV’s On Assignment. He and his family—along with their cat, Gocha—split their time between Charleston and Tbilisi. Will currently serves an associate editor at the South Carolina Review.
About the Book
From Charleston-born geopolitical journalist Will Cathcart comes This is How People Die — a genre-bending debut novel that fuses literary gravitas with dark humor, psychological insight, and a dash of absurdity. At its core is Scooter “Scoot” Jackson, a man with Cystic Fibrosis on a surreal mission to return the heart of composer Frédéric Chopin to its rightful resting place. Why? Because a girl asked him to. What follows is a sharp, swirling, and deeply human adventure that unfolds across continents and consciousness. Part fever dream, part existential investigation, This is How People Die asks what happens when the mind fights the body and the body starts to win, is it madness to mythologize pain, or is it how we survive it, and what does it mean to grieve for yourself while you’re still alive? Channeling the intellectual play of Vonnegut, the lyricism of Capote, and the haunted wisdom of McCarthy, Cathcart delivers a debut that’s both cerebral and soulful — a novel as interested in the mechanics of breathing as it is in the mechanics of being.
About Wesley Moore
A native South Carolinian, Wesley Moore III taught English at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston for 34 years before retiring in 2019. He is the author of the memoir Long Ago Last Summer and the novel Today, Oh, Boy, praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a quietly sublime period piece” with “dazzling characters.” A chapter from Today, Oh, Boy inspired the award-winning short film Summerville 70, which premiered in November and is currently on the festival circuit. Wesley lives with his wife, Caroline, and stepdaughter, Brooks, on Folly Beach.