Rippling Pages: Interviews with Writers

Let’s dust off the archives and celebrate some of the guests we’ve had on the Rippling Pages.

This is a re-release of a previous episode with Polly Barton.

Over the years, we’ve been proud to feature emergent writers on the Rippling Pages and speak to them in the early stages of their careers.

One of those writers is Polly Barton, who’s just released her debut novel, WHAT AM I, A DEER? with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

I spoke to Polly five years ago about her Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize winning, FIFTY SOUNDS. 

Polly is a writer and translator from Japanese. Translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Hunchback by Saul Ichikawa, and Where the Where the Wild Ladies Are by Akko Matsuda. Her essay, Porn: An Oral History was also published by Fitzcarraldo Editons. 

In our conversation, we picked out knotty debates about language, her time in Japan, and what it means to love and love in language

Enjoy!

If you fancy hearing another Fitzcarraldo essayist, why not buy tickets for my event with Alice Hattrick at Leeds Lit Fest:
https://www.leedslitfest.co.uk/events/alice-hattrick-fancy-work/

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
3.00 - What are the Fifty Sounds
5.40 - what is the philosophy behind the bok
10.00 - Wittgenstein
14.30 - Embarrasment, error and comedy
16.15 - Binaries
20.15 - Outsiders and immersion
21.45 - Language games
24.14 - Structuring the book
28.00 - Japan as a man
31.45 - Loving language and people

Reference Points
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Camille Bordas likes miniature objects. 

It’s how they remind her of her childhood in Mexico and show off little details.

In fairness, it might once have been a lighter for Camille, but she still has them all. 

This is bonus content on the Rippling Pages where we ask a writer to provide us with an object that has been with them during their writing process.

You’re also 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 for Patreon subscribers.

Do that here:
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medi

You’ll also hear a little more about Camille’s experience of writing in French and English. 

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 

Tickets for live in conversation with Alice Hattrick at Leeds Lit Fest:

https://www.leedslitfest.co.uk/events/alice-hattrick-fancy-work/

 

Chapters
2.20 - Objects of influence; miniature objects
7.50 - Patreon preview 
9.25 - Camille writing in French and English

Camille Bordas is one heck of an exciting literary talent, and she’s joining me on the Rippling Pages to discuss her story collection, ONE SUN ONLY (Serpent’s Tail).

What I loved about these stories is their wonderfully dry humour, empathetic narratives of flawed characters, and deeply woven observations, within the stories, about how fiction works. 

Plaudits for Camille have come from George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and Percival Everett. She’s a regular contributor to the New Yorker.

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 

 

1.30 - bad backs and teaching
4.00 - writing and talking about death 
8.45 - creating character dynamics 
11.10 - camille’s sociology background
12.45 - experimenting in stories and novels  
15.10 - writing in French and English
17.40 - Rippling pages Patreon
19.55 - animation and jokes
22.15 - what animates a language
24.30 - writing dialogue 
26.30 - misunderstanding ourselves 
28.45 - illness and self growth 
30.15 - plotting
33.30 - how sopranos helps with plotting 
36.35 - recreating scenes from the sopranos
39.00 - acting and writing

Reference Points

Donald Barthelme 
Delphine Horvilleur
Karl Ove Knausgård
Gwendoline Riley
Katharina Volckmer 

 

TV
The Sopranos

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 Points
Anton Chekhov
Hamlet
Taylor 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 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)