Rippling Pages: Interviews with Writers

Neil Griffiths on TRAUMA: Writing About Art and Mental Health

"I was wrestling with what certain states of being feel like as negatives."

Novelist and publisher, Neil Griffiths, joined me to discuss his essay, 'Madness as Such', which is featured 
in Trauma: Writing About Art and Mental Health (Dodo Ink).

Neil talks candidly about his essay which reflects on his experiences of depression. Indeed, if you are affected by any 
of the themes discussed in today's episode, I've reserved this episode's Rippling Points for a couple of links to charities.

The Samaritans 
Mind

Reference Points:

Books:

Neil's Novels:
As a God Might Be (Dodo Ink)
Saving Caravaggio (Penguin)
Betrayal in Naples (Penguin)

Clair-Louise Bennett - Pond
Charles Dickens - Bleak House
Fyodor Doestoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Mathias Énard - Zone
Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Isobel Wohl - Cold New Climate - the inaugural novel of Neil's publishing company, Weatherglass Books

Writers:

Francis Spufford

Essays:

Neil's Review of Francis Spufford's True Stories and Other Essays on Review 31

BUY TRAUMA: WRITING ABOUT ART AND MENTAL HEALTH HERE

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Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages

Enjoyed this episode - why not send a small donation to support with the running costs! Thank you! - https://ko-fi.com/liambishop

Olja Knežević and Catherine the Great and the Small

'Where there is conflict, there is always a path to literature...Freedom is an important topic for me.'

What a pleasure to talk to the Montenegrin writer, Olja Knežević about her trans-generational novel, Catherine the Great and the Small (Istros Books). The novel is translated by Paula Gordon and Ellen Elias-Bursać

Enjoyed this episode - why not send a small donation to support with the running costs! Thank you! - https://ko-fi.com/liambishop

Rippling Points:

• Lessons from writing in and about a civil war
• Why don't we write about grandmothers more?

BUY CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE SMALL HERE

Reference Points

Writers

• Rachel Cusk
• Sheila Heti
• Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Olja's first novel - Milena and Other Social Reforms

Ideal lockdown literary listening. 

Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages

 

Jen Calleja on Time and Goblins

'I want the story the story to be as disorientating for the reader as it is for me...I'm not trying to offer an answer or a safe and complete world...'

The incredibly talented Jen Calleja joins the RP Pod to talk about her short story collection, I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For (Prototype Publishing), and Goblins (Rough Trade Books), a personal exploration of 'goblinery.'

Enjoyed this episode - why not send a small donation to support with the running costs! Thank you! - https://ko-fi.com/liambishop

Rippling Points:

• That's all we've got time for: setting 'temporal parameters' for writing a story
• Is it really the way it is? Working with and against lessons learned in youth

Buy I'M AFRAID THAT'S ALL WE'VE GOT TIME FOR here

Buy GOBLINS here

 

Reference Points

Books and Writers

• Jen Calleja's poetry collection, SERIOUS JUSTICE
• Interview with the writer Megan Nolan
• The Complete Short Stories of Leonora Carrington

Films

• Labyrinth (1986: Jim Henson)

Artists

• Paula Rego
• Rachel Louise Hodgson

Ideal lockdown literary listening. 

Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages

 

 

Katharina Volckmer and The Appointment

'It felt liberating to find that voice and put it on paper...Some restrictions can be creative.'

Hello! Katharina Volckmer talks about her debut novel, The Appointment (Fitzcarraldo Editions), a TLS 'Book of the Year 2020', and one critics have called 'a darkly funny untangling of national and sexual identity' (The Guardian).

And what a great way to kick off our 'Finding Room' series with a novel set entirely in one room...

Enjoyed this episode - why not send a small donation to support with the running costs! Thank you! - https://ko-fi.com/liambishop

Rippling Points

• Can the restrictions of writing in a language which isn't your 'mother tongue' ultimately set you free?
• How a 'silent' character can be a 'loud' presence.

Buy THE APPOINTMENT here

 

Reference Points

Books and Writers

Thomas Bernhard - The Old Masters

Siri Hustvedt - The Blindfold

Franz Kafka

Ottessa Moshfegh

Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint

Articles

Katharina in conversation with RL Goldberg for the Paris Review

Katharina on 'that strange German silence' that persists over the Holocaust for the Guardian

Ideal lockdown literary listening. 

Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages

Gaia Holmes and 'RESIST'

'I did feel like I wasn't living my own life. I was in the world of Newbury and trees.'

These are some Rippling Pages Pilot episodes published in Summer 2020.

Gaia Holmes talks about her story, '198 Methods of NVDA', which features in Comma Press's Resist Anthology. 

Rippling Points:

• Researching the environment to create your story's environment.
• 'Thisness' and how some elements of the story might refuse to be resolved.

Buy RESIST: STORIES OF UPRISING from Comma Press here.

Reference Points

Books

9 Miles by Jim Hindall - http://www.ninemiles.org/​

Circles on the Water – Selected Poems of Marge Piercy - https://margepiercy.com/portfolio-ite...​

Articles

The Newbury bypass protest of 1996 - in pictures - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...​

Did the Newbury bypass tree huggers change anything - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...​

How the Greenham Common protests changed lives - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...​

198 Methods of Non-Violent Action – Gene Sharp - https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-confli...​

Films

Tales of Resistance by Jamie Lowe - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9037272/

Thomas Chadwick and 'Above the Fat'

‘Things don’t always turn out how you intended them to, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.’

These are some Rippling Pages Pilot episodes published in Summer 2020.

Thomas Chadwick on his short story collection ABOVE THE FAT (Splice).

Rippling Points:

• Using the ‘byproducts’ of our lives and writing in writing
• How a concept like 'haunting' can be a less than spooky idea

Buy ABOVE THE FAT here.

Reference Points

Books

Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures by Mark Fisher (2014: Zero Books)