Episode Summary

What happens to a love story that has nowhere to go? And who has the right to tell it?

In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, host Jessie Huth speaks with novelist Sarvat Hasin about her novel Strange Girls, a story about female friendship, creative ambition and the complicated emotions that can exist between admiration and rivalry.

The book follows two young women who meet at university and become deeply entwined in one another’s lives. Their friendship is creative, admiring and competitive all at once. It is the kind of relationship that can leave a permanent imprint.

Jessie and Sarvat talk about the emotional complexity of intense friendships, the strange grief of friendship breakups and the ways our lives gradually move in different directions as we grow older.

They also discuss creative ambition, the realities of becoming a writer and the ethical questions that arise when fiction draws on shared experiences. Who owns a story when two people have lived it together?

This is a conversation about creativity, longing, rivalry and the things that are often left unsaid between friends.

Topics Covered

• Intense female friendships and formative relationships

About Sarvat Hasin

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book You Can't Go Home Again was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark (Dialogue Books, Hachette UK) won the Mo Siewcharran Prize was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award. She lives in London. You can read more about Sarvat Hasin and Strange Girls here.

About the Podcast

How You Find Your Voice is the podcast that asks brilliant guests, mostly women, how they found or reclaimed their voices.

Through conversations with writers, activists, artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs, we explore the work they have made, the lives they have lived and the inner transformations that made it possible.

We talk about turning points and resistance, doubt and silence, creative risk and process, as well as the messy business of becoming.

Listen and Follow

If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast for future episodes.

If you would like to stay connected to these conversations and hear about upcoming events, salons and gatherings, you can join the How You Find Your Voice mailing list here.

You can also follow How You Find Your Voice on Substack for longer reflections on voice, creativity and the ideas behind the podcast, or on Instagram for updates.

Key Words

Sarvat Hasin, Strange Girls novel, female friendship in literature, creative rivalry between friends, women writers podcast, writing fiction process, ethics of storytelling, creative ambition, literary podcast, finding your voice podcast

Episode Summary

What happens when you lose your voice, not just creatively but literally?

Topics Covered

About Ngaio Anyia

Ngaio Anyia is a multi-hyphenate creative: a singer, songwriter, DJ, producer, community creator and inclusion and diversity consultant. 

About the Podcast

How You Find Your Voice is the podcast that asks brilliant guests (mostly women) how they found or reclaimed their voices, on every level. 

Through intimate conversations with writers, activists, artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs, we explore the work they've made, the lives they've lived and the inner transformations that made it all possible. We talk about turning points and resistance, doubt and silence, creative risk and process, as well as the messy business of becoming. 

Listen and follow

How You Find Your Voice

If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast for future episodes.

You can also follow How You Find Your Voice on Substack for longer reflections on voice, creativity and the ideas behind the podcast. Or simply follow on Instagram for the latest updates.

Keywords

finding your voice podcast, Ngaio Anyia, women in music production, female creativity podcast, creative confidence, voice and identity, Booty Bass Bristol, women reclaiming their voice, creative process podcast, women in electronic music

A conversation about myth, survivors, voice and power under patriarchy.

In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, host Jessie Huth is joined by poet and author Nikita Gill to discuss her latest book Hekate, a mythic coming-of-age story rooted in exile, survival and the politics of power.

They explore Hekate as the goddess of liminal spaces and the vulnerable, why Gill chose to tell a story from the “losing” side of war, and what happens to women and children when history is written by victors.

The conversation also touches on female rage, the fear it provokes, and why stories are never neutral.

Ranging across Greek myth, modern politics, displacement, trauma and freedom, the episode examines the deep relationship between language, justice and voice.

Topics covered

Quotes to Listen For

About Nikita Gill

Nikita Gill is an Irish-Indian poet who has the attention of 840,000 Instagram followers worldwide for her work. Her work offers a shift of perspective which centres women in both Greek and Hindu myth as well as folklore. She has given a TEDx Talk, spoken at every major literary festival in the UK and been shortlisted for the Goodreads Choice Award in poetry three times, the Childrens Poetry Award two times and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Gill has written seven poetry collections.

Links

For more on Nikita Gill's book, Hekate see here.

About the Podcast

How You Find Your Voice is the podcast that asks brilliant guests (mostly women) how they found or reclaimed their voices, on every level. 

Through intimate conversations with writers, activists, artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs, we explore the work they've made, the lives they've lived and the inner transformations that made it all possible. We talk about turning points and resistance, doubt and silence, creative risk and process, as well as the messy business of becoming. 

Listen and follow

How You Find Your Voice

If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast for future episodes.

You can also follow How You Find Your Voice on Substack for longer reflections on voice, creativity and the ideas behind the podcast.

Keywords:

Nikita Gill, Hekate, feminist mythology, female rage, survivors, women’s voices, patriarchy, power, myth and politics, exile and refugees, displacement, storytelling and justice


In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, host Jessie Huth is joined by best-selling novelist, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson MBE, to talk about myth, memory, and the creative courage it takes to begin again.

Topics covered

Keywords

How You Find Your Voice, Sally Magnusson, Norse mythology, Hel, feminist retellings, myth and memory, creativity in midlife, women’s voices, storytelling, fiction writing, imagination

About the guest


Sally Magnusson MBE is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of several acclaimed novels including The Seal Woman’s Gift, Music in the Dark, and The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, as well as the memoir, Where Memories Go, written after caring for her mother through dementia. Her work frequently explores myth, memory, identity and the stories that shape us. You can read more about Sally Magnusson and her work here. 

A longer introduction to the ideas behind How You Find Your Voice and what led me to make it. 

Introducing the How You Find Your Voice podcast and what to expect in the first episodes. 

Who was Pamela Churchill Harriman? Only the biggest political player you've never heard of.

In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, I'm joined by bestselling biographer and journalist, Sonia Purnell to explore the remarkable life of Pamela Churchill Harriman.

Branded the greatest courtesan of the twentieth century and dismissed for decades as a socialite or footnote, Pamela Churchill Harriman was in fact hugely influential behind the scenes. As Sonia's book Kingmaker reveals, she played a fundamental role in shaping twentieth-century politics, diplomacy and power. And she's finally getting her due.

Topics covered

This is a conversation about power, silenced voices, the truths history chose not to tell and why it's essential we hear them now.

Keywords

Women in history, Sonia Purnell, Pamela Churchill Harriman, Kingmaker, women and power, female biography

About Sonia Purnell

Sonia Purnell is an award-winning biographer and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, known for shining a light on extraordinary women history tried to forget. Her books include A Woman of No Importance, the New York Times bestseller about WWII spy Virginia Hall, and First Lady, a ground-breaking biography of Clementine Churchill. Kingmaker has been named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, and many more.

Sonia Purnall has been called “one of the most accomplished biographers of our time” (Liza Mundy) and brings journalistic rigour, vivid storytelling, and feminist insight to all her work.

Writer Lily Dunn joins host Jessie Huth for a wide-ranging conversation about writing memoir, finding a voice, and what it takes to tell the truth on the page.

Drawing on her latest book Into Being Lily reflects on the power and transformative potential of memoir, the role of editing in shaping a voice, and why memoir is rarely about revelation alone. She speaks candidly about writing her critically acclaimed memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, a Cult, a Wild Unraveling, the emotional and ethical complexity of writing about family, and what happens when private stories enter the public world.

Topics covered

Keywords

voice, women’s voices, writing, creativity, memoir, personal narrative, family, truth-telling, Lily Dunn, Sins of My Father, Into Being

Dr Lily Dunn is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, an editor and a lecturer at Bath Spa University. Her memoir, Sins of my Father: A Daughter, a Cult, a Wild Unravelling won The Guardian Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2022. Her latest book, Into Being: the radical craft of memoir and its power to transform is an essential guide to writing memoir as a radical and empowering practice. 

Lily co-founded the London Lit Lab at Birkbeck University in London, where she teaches creative writing. Her specialisms include memoirs, personal essays and narrative nonfiction.

Books mentioned

Into Being by Lily Dunn

Sins of My Father by Lily Dunn

Read more here  

About the guest

 Lily Dunn on Substack 

How You Find Your Voice

If you enjoyed this conversation, you can follow the podcast for future episodes.