Liam Bishop curating the best writers to help you with your writing
Episodes
Thursday Aug 07, 2025
Thursday Aug 07, 2025
”If I enter a project knowing what I’m going to do, confidently, I wouldn’t do it.”
It’s Women in Translation Month!
Yan Ge is here to discuss her life and writing. She was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province People’s Republic of China. Emerging as a prodigious writer in Chinese and Sichuanese, she was named as one of China’s twenty future literary masters by People Magazine. In 2012, she was chosen as Best New Writer by the Prestigious Chinese Literature Media Prize. For English language readers, Nicky Harman first translated her novella, White Horse, for Hope Road publishing in 2014, a story about young girls negotiating adolescence in the presence of a mysterious white horse. Then, four years later, Nicky translated The Chilli Bean Paste Clan in 2018, published by Balestier. Elsewhere arrived in 2023 (Faber), and Yan Ge treated us to a new dimension of her work entirely: short fiction and, for the first time, written in English.
Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop on bookshop.org.uk 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_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Reference Points
George Saunders
Rippling Points
Chapters
02.30 - connected by Leeds
4.20 - Drifting from the Chinese language
5.45 - Writing elsewhere in English
09.20 - Transforming the process
10:50 - A new relationship with language
14:05 - Linguistic and cultural experiences of the characters
16:47- Happiness
19:24 - Contentment and striving
21:00 - Rippling Pages Bookshop
23:41 - Making writing hard and easy
28:26 - Having belief
Thursday Jul 24, 2025
Thursday Jul 24, 2025
“She starts having an experience to see her own life as a more shifting sands that isn’t to be fear but in fact to be enjoyed.”
Kimberly Campanello is here to talk about her novel, USE THE WORDS YOU HAVE (Somesuch Editions). It’s a sweltering summer in Bretagne, France. K, an American exchange student, is navigating more than just unfamiliar streets. She’s finding a new language. This is bonus content from the previous episode.
In this bonus content, I’ve asked Kimberly to provide me with some objects that Kimberly associated with writing the book, USE THE WORDS YOU HAVE. It’s an interesting and new way to think about influence, and a way to understand both the book and the writer a bit more.
We talk about a flag, a musician, Alan Stivell, and something called a ‘Fest Noz’, all of them relating to the culture of Brittany where the novel is set.
Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop on bookshop.org.uk 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_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Rippling Points
1.54 - Proust and Memory
04.01 - Objects of influence
06.21 - Fest Noz
07.01 - Alan Stivell
08.29 - The Brittany Flag, the Blanche Ermine
Reference Point
Jonathan Culler
Arthur Rimbaud
Thursday Jul 10, 2025
Thursday Jul 10, 2025
“How do you sound like you know what you’re doing when you don’t have the words”
Kimberly Campanello is here to talk about her novel, USE THE WORDS YOU HAVE (Somesuch Editions). It’s a sweltering summer in Bretagne, France. K, an American exchange student, is navigating more than just unfamiliar streets. She’s finding a new language.
Kimberly’s work moves between forms, genres, and histories. She’s the author of MOTHERBABYHOME (zimZALLA), a harrowing and formally innovative response to Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes, is held in the national poetry special collections across the U.K and Ireland. Her poetry has appeared in publications like Granta, The White Review, and The Poetry Review, and essays in Tolka. And, this year, her poetry collection, AN INTERESTING DETAIL was released by Bloomsbury.
Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop on bookshop.org.uk 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_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Rippling Points
01:30 - Motherbabyhome
02:07 - From motherbabyhome to Use the words you have
05:38 - What is the novel about
08:02 - Sounding like you know what you’re doing when you don’t
09:51 - Differences poetry and the novel
11:46 - Who is K
14:16 - Belief and reading
15:58 - Making sense through Rimbaud
16:28 - Life in the Midwest
20:03 - Rippling Pages Bookshop
21:05 - K in Paris
22:16 - K’s notebook
25:37 - Wonky translations
29:19 - Kimberly’s notebooks.
Reference Points
Hart Crane
Dante
Marguerite Duras
Annie Ernaux
Tony Harrison
Marcel Proust
Arthur Rimbaud
Nathalie Sarraute
Bruce Omar Yates review https://thelondonmagazine.org/review-use-the-words-you-have-by-kimberly-campanello/
Thursday Jun 26, 2025
Thursday Jun 26, 2025
“I found myself writing an apology letter…and I didn’t know what I was apologising for.”
In Uttama Kirit Patel’s novel, The Shape of an Apostrophe (Serpent’s Tail), Lina is pregnant, and she’s finding that this seemingly salubrious society is not congenial and accommodating to the difficult challenges of an unplanned pregnancy.
Uttama, born to Gujarati parents who then since found their way to the United Arab Emirates via Kampala, Surat, Pondicherry and Colchester. Her short fiction was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for emerging writers.
Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop on bookshop.org.uk 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_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Reference Points
Helen Phillips - The Need
Rippling Points
.30 - Uttama's life living around the world.
2.47 - An unexpected pregnancy
3.45 - Limited reproductive rights and setting the novel in Dubai
5.47 - writing a novel about someone who doesn't want children
6.30 - Uttama writing an apology letter to herself
7.59 - On desire
11.17 - Lina's relationship with her parents
12.57 - Does Lina have a support network?
14.03 - Lina's husband and her mother-in-law
16.44 - Is Lina's mother-in-law a feminist?
22.27 - Uttama's interest in sea-life.
24.10 - Lina's feeling of loss
26.41 - Lines, traces and artistry of Lina in the novel.
32.45 - Uttama's writing journey
Saturday Jun 14, 2025
Saturday Jun 14, 2025
“When I set out to plan the business, I wrote ten words - the world I always kept coming to was community.”
The Rippling Pages is all about curating the best writers to inspire you and your writing - today, we’re speaking to another curator. Eden Barnes is the owner of Next Chapter Books, an indie women-focussed bookshop in Leeds, and I had a quick chat with her in store.
There’s lots going on this week in Leeds. Leeds Lit Fest is starting, and it’s Indie Bookshop Week. Here someone who is at the centre of it.
Eden tells us:
The personal journey to opening a bookshop in Leeds
Why she focusses women’s writing
Balancing commercial and personal interests
Creating a safe space and sense of community for readers
What she’s got planned for next week and the rest of the year.
Remember, if you buy from Rippling Pages Bookshop on bookshop.org.uk 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_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Check out Next Chapter Books website: https://www.nextchapterleeds.co.uk/
Tickets for Leeds Lit Fest Events: https://www.leedslitfest.co.uk/
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Thursday Jun 12, 2025
Thursday Jun 12, 2025
"It is also difficult to imbue the people and the movements of the past with the complexities we offer ourselves."
If you were to meet a time traveller from the future, what would you ask them? This is the question Roisin Dunnett asks in her novel, A LINE YOU HAVE TRACED (Magpie Books/Oneworld Publications). Spanning over three centuries, three women are connected by forces they, at first, don’t understand. From post-WWI Britain, to East End London’s modern queer scene, to a portentous dystopian future, Roisin’s novel is coded with messages between the past, present and future. It's published by Magpie Books, an imprint of Oneworld.
You can buy A LINE YOU HAVE TRACED from the Rippling Pages bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod
Support the Rippling Pages on a new Patreon
https://patreon.com/RipplingPagesPod?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
Interested in hosting your own podcast? Follow this link and find out how:
https://www.podbean.com/ripplingpages
Rippling Points
2.01 - the past, present and future.
3.55 - is there a past event that influenced this novel?
6.45 - Narratives of women
10.16 - which character did Roisin write first?
11.33 - Why do characters feel out of time
13.02 - Visions and dreams in Roisin's novel
19.24 - what would we do if we could actually see the future?
24.30 - The marshes in Roisin's novel.
29.24 - Does your dad pick up litter?
30.59 - Roisin's writing journey
Reference Points
Charles Dickens