Rippling Pages: Interviews with Writers

Happy New Year!

I’m delighted to bring you some more unedited and bonus content from my Christmas and New Year special with Madeleine Dunnigan and Farah Ali. There was just so much good stuff in our craft and curation special, that I wanted to bring you a little more to start the year. 

These books are going to be spoken about in literary circles in January. 

In Pakistan, a young woman grapples with a strange, indefinable illness against a backdrop of political upheaval. In England, a teenager tries to make sense of his intense emotions during one hot summer at boarding school.

Farah Ali’s TELEGRAPHY, published by CB Editions, is her second novel. Originally from Pakistan, Farah has been anthologised for the Pushcart Prize and is the reviews editor at Wasafiri.

JEAN is the debut novel by London-based writer Madeleine Dunnigan, published by Daunt Books. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA programme at New York University.

Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon with exclusive crafted subscriber benefits. 
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages 

Reference Points

Tom McCarthy 

John McGahern

Gerald Murnane

I’m kicking off a 2026 preview with two of the most exciting emerging voices publishing books this January. I speak to them about how they wrote their novels, before asking which books inspired them along the way, and what their books and book selections say about the world today.

If you’re looking for your next great reads of 2026, look no further — Rippling Pages has you covered.

We’re going from Pakistan to a rural boarding school in 1970s London.

In Pakistan, a young woman grapples with a strange, indefinable illness against a backdrop of political upheaval. In England, a teenager tries to make sense of his intense emotions during one hot summer at boarding school.

Farah Ali’s TELEGRAPHY, published by CB Editions, is her second novel. Originally from Pakistan, Farah has been anthologised for the Pushcart Prize and is the reviews editor at Wasafiri.

JEAN is the debut novel by London-based writer Madeleine Dunnigan, published by Daunt Books. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA programme at New York University.

Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon with exclusive crafted subscriber benefits. 
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages 

 

Reference Points

Mathias Énard - The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger's Guild 
Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers
John McGahern - That They May Face the Rising Sun
Gerald Murnane - The Plains
Tom McCarthy - Remainder

 

Chapters

3.15 - illness and narrative voice
5.25 - feeling ill writing the book
10.15 - Madeleine's on Farah's narrator
12.30 - Madeleine's book
16.10 -  different kinds of love.
18.40 - Rippling Pages patreon
19.55 - a queer  story in the boarding school
21.50 - different kinds of intimacy
23.40 - precociousness
28.10 - bodies, illness and healing 
33.00 - what these books say about the world. 
38.00 - Dealing with fracture
40.50 - rippling pages bookshop
41.20 - Madeleine recommends
45.15 - Farah recommends.

I'm delighted to be talking to Rali Chorbadzhiyska about her work as freelance editor, and we're asking what the road to publication really looks like.  

It must be another edition of Ask the Curator. In these episodes, we go behind the curtain of the literary industry to ask another literary curator, how they do what they do.

Over the years, Rali has worked at Penguin RandomHouse, Faber and Canongate, working with some of the biggest names in literature. But she recently went freelance to deliver on her aim of guiding writers refine and elevate their work. She was awarded with a Rising Star Award from The Printing Charity in recognition of her work.

Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon with exclusive crafted subscriber benefits. 
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages 

Links to Rali’s services:

https://www.ralieditorial.com/
https://www.instagram.com/reading.rali/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralieditorial/
https://www.tiktok.com/@reading.rali
 
Reference Points

Farah Ali
Raymond Carver
V.S. Naipaul
Erin Sommers

Chapters

2.25 - what does Rali's work look like?
3.45 - Rali's ideal clients
4.50 - the importance of taking feedback
7.15 - strategies for taking and rejecting feedback
12.00 - finding people who champion you
15.20 - Do writers need to market themselves?
16.10 - Having ties to local communities.
17.40 - Rali’s top tip 
19.40 - books Rali is looking forward to in 2026

Welcome to some bonus content with Lee Cole, and we’re talking about how he used an old book he found at his grandparents to help build the world and characters in his novels. 

Plus, you’re going to hear some extra bits about writing heroes and villains. 

Fulfillment, Lee Cole’s second novel, follows two half brothers whose clashing ambitions—Emmett’s longing to be a screenwriter and his brother’s academic ideals about “rural despair”—go beyond a simple difference in worldview. Something deeper threatens to pull them apart.

Lee is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is also the author of Groundskeeping. Both his novels were published by Faber in the U.K. The New York Times has described his work as “Anne Tyler by way of Sally Rooney.” Originally from Kentucky, Lee joins me today from Philadelphia.

 

Buy Lee Cole’s book here

https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod

Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:

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Welcome to the latest episode of the Rippling Pages. I’m having a coffee with Lee Cole, the American writer from Kentucky. And we’re talking about balancing the feelings and ethics of writing about home.

Now living a humdrum life in Kentucky, Emmett spends his days packing boxes in a warehouse. But what happens when he begins to dream of another life—and when those dreams start to fracture his family relationships?

These questions lie at the heart of Fulfilment, Lee Cole’s second novel. The book follows two half brothers whose clashing ambitions—Emmett’s longing to be a screenwriter and his brother’s academic ideals about “rural despair”—go beyond a simple difference in worldview. Something deeper threatens to pull them apart.

Lee is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is also the author of Groundskeeping. Both his novels were published by Faber in the U.K. The New York Times has described his work as “Anne Tyler by way of Sally Rooney.” Originally from Kentucky, Lee joins me today from Philadelphia.

Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop all books are all sourced from indie bookshops!

https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod

 

Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon

https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

 

Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:

https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages

 

1.35 - Ann Tyler and Sally Rooney

5.05 - why Kentucky 

7.25 - people who leave and stay in small towns 

9.30 - why does Emmett wish he had what Joel has?

11.10 - southern fried rendition of Marx

12.10 - warehouses 

16.12 - the difficulty of warehouse jobs 

18.30 - Kentucky’s beauty 

19.45 - backgrounds and worldviews 

21.45 - guilt about writing about home or 

22.30 - rippling pages bookshop

23.35 - Alice’s role

26.15 - Alice’s dream of owning a farm 

28.50 - knowing what our desires are 

32.50 - writing about writers impulses

Books

Wendell Berry

Annie Dillard

Sigmund Freud

Aldo Leopold

Karl Marx

Sally Rooney 

Anne Tyler

John Updike