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.

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

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Chapters

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.

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1.30 - bad backs and teaching

Reference Points

Donald Barthelme 

TV

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 

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Chapters

Reference Points

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. 

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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

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)

Hamlet

Music

Van Morrison

Taylor Swift

The Sound of Music (1965: Robert Wise)

Welcome to this bonus content with Leon Craig. We’re talking about how Leon found an old letter knife in a shop which helped her understand her characters desires. PLUS! You’ll hear Leon talking about plagues, the pandemic, and why she left the UK to write her novel about the UK.

Leon was here to discuss THE DECADENCE (Sceptre), a novel about a group of friends who find shelter in an old abandoned home, but encounter more than they bargained for. Leon Craig, whose previous collection of short stories, PARALLEL HELLS, was also published by Sceptre, is a graduate of the Birkbeck MFA Creative Writing course. Her work has been published by Hazlitt, the Sunday Times, the London Magazine and others and is forthcoming in Nulla magazine and Berlin Babel anthology.

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I’m looking forward to diving into the crumbling and the haunted this week with Leon Craig. 

Have you ever walked past an old abandoned house and wondered what kinds of lives were lived there? Have you ever dared to explore one? Perhaps you wanted to escape and hide in the house. Or perhaps you wanted to use it for something a little more nefarious.

Leon Craig, whose previous collection of short stories, PARALLEL HELLS, was also published by Sceptre, is a graduate of the Birkbeck MFA Creative Writing course. Her work has been published by Hazlitt, the Sunday Times, the London Magazine and others and is forthcoming in Nulla magazine and Berlin Babel anthology.

Get exclusive subscriber benefits from the Rippling Pages. 

Check out the Rippling Pages Bookshop and buy all the books featured on the Rippling Pages:

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Episode Chapters

1.30 - rising literary stars poll

Reference Points

Saltburn (2023, dir. Emerald Fennell)

Beowulf

The Great Gatsby (1925, F.Scott Fitzgerald)

White is for Witching(2009, Helen Oyeyemi)

Brideshead Revisited (1945, Evelyn Waugh)

We’re going to the Slovenian coast this week during the final years Yugoslavia with Ana Schnabl. 

Dunja has finally launched her literary career, but the shadow and spectre of her brother’s death haunts both her and her family. What happens when she returns to investigate her brother’s death? And what happens when the truth becomes stranger than the fiction she writes?

Ana Schnabl’s novel is published by Divided Publishing. Ana is a Slovenian writer, and this is her second novel to be translated into English, by Rawley Grau. Her first novel to be translated into English was The Masterpiece, that time by David Limon. In Slovenia, she is a winner of Slovenia’s prestigious literary prize, the Kresnik award. She’s also a regular contributor to the journal The Guardian, writing on Balkan politics and culture.

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Episode Chapters

1.30 - Ana's based in Slovenia

Reference Points

Agatha Christie 

Marcel Proust

Virginia Woolf

What a lovely time I had speaking and sitting with Eva Meijer, the Dutch Author, in Leeds to discuss their novel SEA NOW. 

A government who seems slow to respond to a rapidly encroaching crisis. Marketing executives exploiting ways to make quick cash. A missing Prime Minister. Leavers and remainers conflicted about the right course of action. It all sounds like a playbook for our recent political crises. But when the dams start bursting in the Netherlands and the country rapidly begins to flood and be subsumed, what happens when people are faced with the unthinkable in this new waterworld. 

These are the questions at the heart of Eva Meijer’s, SEA NOW, translated by Anne Thompson Melo, and published by Peirene Press.

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Chapters

2.25 - what is the novel about

Happy New Year!

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.

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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. 

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

Reference Points

Chapters

3.15 - illness and narrative voice