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 experience 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  Chapters 2.00 - is 'master' the right word? 7.15 - Devotions forming a single whole 9.15 Lucy's relationship with her editor 12.50 - writing in real-time  16.50 - Choose your own adventure stories. 18.10 - Hamlet. 21.10 - Writing about love 26.05 - Devotions easter egg! 28.35 finding meaning in the here and the now.  32.20 - Patreon shoutouts! 33.50 - inspired by James Joyce 37.26 - writing great psychic movements. 42.00 - Special writing from Lucy.  46.45 - Finding meaning in the darkness 51.25 - 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 Music Ludwig van Beethoven Van Morrison Taylor Swift Films The Sound of Music (1965: Robert Wise)