A podcast on the craft of writing, crafted and curated by Liam Bishop
Episodes
Friday Mar 19, 2021
Friday Mar 19, 2021
'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
Friday Mar 05, 2021
Friday Mar 05, 2021
'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
Artists
Ideal lockdown literary listening.
Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages
Friday Feb 19, 2021
Friday Feb 19, 2021
'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.
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
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
‘I do believe that we’re all travellers of a fashion. For the poetic process I personally need a sense of freedom in order to write, and I like to feel free.’
These are some Rippling Pages Pilot episodes published in Summer 2020
Katherine Horrex talks about her debut collection of poetry, GROWLERY (Carcanet).
Rippling Points:
- How 'Growlery', a term from another era, can come to represent the space you write in.
- The challenges of writing or not writing about big contemporary topics like Brexit.
Reference Points
Books
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Penguin Classics)
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (Faber)
Guy Debord and the Situationist Manifesto
The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times and Glorious Times of the Situationist International by McKenzie Wark (Verso Books)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Vintage Classics)
Essays
Ange Milonko’s essay on Alice Oswald. (https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020...)
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
'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/
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
Tuesday Feb 16, 2021
‘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