Rippling Pages: Interviews with Writers

It's Easter - and it's easter egg time. In this bonus content, you're going to hear a lot about Easter Eggs, but not the chocolate kind. Instead, we’re talking those little secret insights to Lucy's work, both past, present and future. This is bonus content and our objects of influence segment where we ask a writer to provide us with an object that has been with them during the writing of the book. It's also a little Easter Egg from the Rippling Pages too. You're going to hear a snippet of the Patreon close-reads podcast for subscribers. If you like the sound of it, you can sign up for exclusive member benefits, including the full close read podcast exclusive to subscribers. Get exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi    Other useful links to heighten your Rippling Pages experience: Check out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages:https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages  Chapters- Close Read Patreon Preview 1.45- Objects of Influence - 3.55 Reference PointsAnton ChekhovHamletTaylor Swift

Oh wow! It was my pleasure to have a coffee with and speak to the writer Lucy Caldwell about her new short story collection, DEVOTIONS (published by Faber and Faber). That's right, we were live and in person having a coffee talking about Lucy's new collection I revelled in a theatre troupe performing a choose your own version of Hamlet; I had a wry smile watching Christopher Plummer ponder on whether he really did love Julie Andrews, and among the many other stories, continued to marvel at Lucy's capacity to meditate on death, existence, light and love. Lucy is from Belfast. She lives in Kent, but we had our conversation in London.  Other useful links to heighten your Rippling Pages experienceGet exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_mediCheck out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages:https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespodInterested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages  Chapters2.00 - is 'master' the right word?7.15 - Devotions forming a single whole9.15 Lucy's relationship with her editor12.50 - writing in real-time 16.50 - Choose your own adventure stories.18.10 - Hamlet.21.10 - Writing about love26.05 - Devotions easter egg!28.35 finding meaning in the here and the now. 32.20 - Patreon shoutouts!33.50 - inspired by James Joyce37.26 - writing great psychic movements.42.00 - Special writing from Lucy. 46.45 - Finding meaning in the darkness51.25 - Suffering as a portal.  Reference Points Sebastian Barry Elizabeth Bowen Willa Cather Anton Chekhov Dante Ram Dass John Donne T.S. Eliot Anne Enright Wendy Erskine bell hooks Kazuo Ishiguro James Joyce Claire Kilroy Rosamond Lehman Louis MacNeice Alice Munro Cardinal Newman Edna O’Brien Frank O’Hara Rumi Helen Simpson John Updike Sylvia Townsend Warner Virginia Woolf W.B. Yeats Lucy’s Work Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (edited by Lucy, Faber, 2021) Multitudes (Faber, 2016) Intimacies (Faber, 2021) Leaves (Faber: 2007) Where They Were Missed (Faber: 2005) Plays Hamlet MusicLudwig van Beethoven Van Morrison Taylor Swift Films The Sound of Music (1965: Robert Wise)  

Welcome to this bonus content with Leon Craig. We’re talking about how Leon found an old letter knife in a shop which helped her understand her characters desires. PLUS! You’ll hear Leon talking about plagues, the pandemic, and why she left the UK to write her novel about the UK.   Leon was here to discuss THE DECADENCE (Sceptre), a novel about a group of friends who find shelter in an old abandoned home, but encounter more than they bargained for. Leon Craig, whose previous collection of short stories, PARALLEL HELLS, was also published by Sceptre, is a graduate of the Birkbeck MFA Creative Writing course. Her work has been published by Hazlitt, the Sunday Times, the London Magazine and others and is forthcoming in Nulla magazine and Berlin Babel anthology.   Get exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi Check out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages 

I’m looking forward to diving into the crumbling and the haunted this week with Leon Craig. We’re discussing Leon Craig’s THE DECADENCE.And you the listener picked Leon as one of the rising stars of literature that you wanted me to interview. Have you ever walked past an old abandoned house and wondered what kinds of lives were lived there? Have you ever dared to explore one? Perhaps you wanted to escape and hide in the house. Or perhaps you wanted to use it for something a little more nefarious. Leon Craig, whose previous collection of short stories, PARALLEL HELLS, was also published by Sceptre, is a graduate of the Birkbeck MFA Creative Writing course. Her work has been published by Hazlitt, the Sunday Times, the London Magazine and others and is forthcoming in Nulla magazine and Berlin Babel anthology.   Get exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi Check out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages  Episode Chapters 1.30 - rising literary stars poll3.30 - The crumbling haunted house6.30 - the ensemble cast 7.25 - early hauntings. 10.10 - misunderstandings and humour 11.50 -embracing imperfect characters.14.25 - secret passageways 16.05 - sexual elements to hauntings. 19.10 - colonial legacies and trespassing22.55 - Rippling Pages Patreon24.20 - on beauty  27.00 - getting what we want. 29.50 - desire and disgust 32.00 - The country housegenre37.15 - Leon’s next novel   Reference PointsHouse of Leaves (2000, Mark Z. Danielewski). Saltburn (2023, dir. Emerald Fennell) Beowulf The Great Gatsby (1925, F.Scott Fitzgerald) White is for Witching(2009, Helen Oyeyemi) Brideshead Revisited (1945, Evelyn Waugh)

We’re going to the Slovenian coast this week during the final years Yugoslavia with Ana Schnabl.  Dunja has finally launched her literary career, but the shadow and spectre of her brother’s death haunts both her and her family. What happens when she returns to investigate her brother’s death? And what happens when the truth becomes stranger than the fiction she writes? Ana Schnabl’s novel is published by Divided Publishing. Ana is a Slovenian writer, and this is her second novel to be translated into English, by Rawley Grau. Her first novel to be translated into English was The Masterpiece, that time by David Limon. In Slovenia, she is a winner of Slovenia’s prestigious literary prize, the Kresnik award. She’s also a regular contributor to the journal The Guardian, writing on Balkan politics and culture. Get exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi Check out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages  Episode Chapters 1.30 - Ana's based in Slovenia2.35 - Fake crime novels3.50 - Djuna's relationship with her dead brother.5.30 - Why has Djuna returned?7.30 - Family dynamics. 9.00 - Rockstars and the Slovene transition10.35 - Michael Jackson13.30 - a fake crime novel15.00 - Rippling Pages Bookshop16.00 - Not liking modernist novels19.45 - Writing cerebral characters21.00 - Sentimental feelings about home24.15 - Ice cream and the Adriatic coast27.30 - Not believing in legacies.30.30 sitting with unpleasant people.31.50 - who helps Djuna.33.45 - Smoking   Reference Points Agatha Christie  Marcel Proust Virginia Woolf