A Note From Catbird Press

		Catbird Press specializes in quality, imaginative prose humor (we call it "humor for grownups") and Central European literature in translation (so far, from Czech and German). The English-language fiction we publish generally has a comic, sometimes darkly comic vision, excellent writing, and a style that doesn't seem like anything else out there. Our books do not seek to be three-dimensionally realistic or give a slice of life, but rather to approach life from odd angles that shed a different sort of light, yet are accessible to anyone.
Why Catbird? "The Catbird Seat" is one of James Thurber's most memorable stories, and Thurber is one of Catbird's favorite writers. The expression "sitting in the catbird seat" is what a small, independent publisher is not: sitting pretty. The word "catbird" binds together the names of two sworn enemies. In this spirit, our books are hybrid and semmingly contradictory. A catbird is a type of mockingbird, and we're a publisher of books that take pleasure in mocking the absurdities of conventions, professions, and people. The catbird makes for a nice logo.		Catbird was founded in 1987 by Robert Wechsler and publishes between three and six books a year. We currently have 34 books in print. Our authors include, besides Floyd Kemske, American writers Randall Beth Platt, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Arnold B. Kanter; Czech writers Karel Capek, Vladimir Paral, and Karel Polacek; and the German writer Joseph von Westphalen. We have also published anthologies of humor about traveling to particular countries, legal humor, contemporary Czech fiction, and contemporary German Jewish writing. To order our catalog, you can e-mail us at catbird@pipeline.com. Visit our website

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