She Wrote Too

Some conversations stay with you long after they end and speaking with Hibo Wardere is one of them.

Hibo is one of the UK’s most courageous and compelling campaigners against female genital mutilation (FGM). She is a teacher, author, and advocate whose voice has reshaped how schools, safeguarding teams, and medical professionals understand this form of violence. But to talk with her is to understand something more fundamental: Hibo has always questioned the stories she was given.

Growing up as a Somali girl, she heard the traditional narratives passed down through generations, stories meant to explain, to justify, to silence. But Hibo never liked them. Even as a child, something in her refused to accept the logic, the cruelty, or the inevitability they claimed. That instinct, that internal rebellion, is the foundation of the woman she became.

The story she chose to tell - the one she wrote in her remarkable memoir Cut soon being made into a big screen film which begins in production next year - has already made and will continue to make an incredible impact. After decades of silence surrounding FGM, Hibo’s voice will reach even wider audiences, shaping the narrative on a scale unimaginable when she was that questioning young girl. As she told us she is ‘everywhere’. Her determination knows no bounds.

In our interview, she describes training doctors who still ask her, ‘Is it actually happening here?’ Her frustration is palpable and justified. ‘Would you ever ask whether child molestation is still happening?’ she replies.

Hibo intends to change that and with her team at Educate not Mutilate she already is.

While this interview is about Hibo’s story, it is also about resistance, agency, the refusal to accept inherited narratives, and the courage it takes to tell a story powerful enough to rewrite a future. Hibo’s life is testament to that courage.

We are honoured to share her words with you.

Please do look at her website and donate to support her charity or consider other ways that you could support her amazing work.

Please, listen to her message. Be fierce. Continue the fight.

In this episode of She Wrote Too, we dive into one of the most extraordinary and strangely forgotten works of women’s travel writing: On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers by Kate Marsden. It’s a pretty special title for the true story of an incredible adventure!

Caroline had read this book and told me about it - I had not read it but having done some cursory googling (also known as ‘research’) I was very interested to know more about this extraordinary story. Listen how I, characteristically, rudely interrupt Caroline’s well-considered thoughts on this incredible read.

Published in 1892, Marsden’s account follows her gruelling, ice-bitten journey across Siberia in search of a cure for leprosy and to investigate the conditions of remote leper colonies. It’s a book full of contradictions: deeply Victorian and yet radically bold; missionary in tone yet quietly rebellious; full of hardship, compassion, controversy, and grit. As Caroline says, she does love a grim read. It raises the question we keep coming back to on this podcast: how do women like Marsden disappear from literary history when their lives were anything but small?

We explore Marsden’s resilience, the political and religious storms she walked into, and the way her voice oscillates between duty, adventure, and something much more complex. We also talk about the reception of her work - why it was celebrated, then dismissed, and how modern readers can reclaim it with fresh eyes.

It’s a remarkable story from a remarkable woman. Make yourself a cup of something warm, settle in, and let’s ride alongside Kate Marsden into the snow.

Ho ho oh.

In this episode, Caroline Rance and I discuss this book - Still Glides the Stream by Flora Thompson - that both of us could barely believe that we had never read nor heard of before we stumbled across it in a second hand book stall. It really is a special piece of writing, a hybrid of fiction, memoir and ethnography documenting the tales of women and their role in the countryside community in the late Victorian Era until the post-war era with humanity, pragmatism and humour.

We both strongly recommend this book and hope you enjoy our discussion of it. For me, this is a record of why women’s lives have always mattered and as Caroline says in the episode, they were holding everything together!

SHE WROTE TOO - the book.

On a separate note, we had a great time in Brighton launching our book - She Wrote Too: women whose words changed the world. We sold a lot of copies and we ran a really fun workshop encouraging women participants to find their voice - and write!

Our book is available on Amazon. It is suitable for all age groups but is accessible for those age 9 upwards. It provides short biographies of some great women writers and is also an interactive book experience providing prompts for writing, poetry and art - so it is more than your usual book, it’s a space for you to respond.

Our workshop is available for schools, corporations and charities - we can come and visit you. Our website will be live soon so we will let you know about that.

In the meantime, thank you very much for listening. We will be back very soon as we have some great content planned for the following months. Please join us.

Our book is now available on Amazon and we will be launching it at the FiLiA Conference on 10 October 2025 in Brighton. In this episode, we share the Foreword written by Victoria Smith, author of Hags and Unkind. We also share some excerpts from the book about some of our favourite writers.

Imagine a young reader discovering a world of female pioneers, storytellers, and changemakers and seeing themselves reflected in these women’s courage, creativity, and strength. That’s the heart of She Wrote Too.

That question sparked our next step: creating a book that passes the legacy on. Legacy matters. Knowing these women existed matters. It shows young people that they too can create, can think widely, can be heard.

She Wrote Too - the book - is not just something to read. It’s a book to join in with to write, to draw, to dream, to reflect. It offers young readers (aged 9+ and curious adults too) the chance

Over the next few weeks, we will share some more of our original artwork and creative challenges as well as photographs of our book launch!

Please share our book which is available in paperback and Kindle.

Lots of people first meet Jane Austen through Pride and Prejudice often at school, and often as their only encounter with her work. It's certainly her most dramatised novel. In this episode, Caroline and Nicola delve into something a little different: one of Austen’s earliest stories, Love and Freindship (spelled just as she wrote it!), penned when she was just fourteen, and Sanditon the novel she sadly never finished before her untimely death.

Caroline, whose expertise lies in the history of medicine, shares why the cause of Austen’s death at 41 remains uncertain and looks at the competing theories.

This episode comes with a small audio caveat: Nicola was recording from a holiday cottage in the wilds of Cornwall with dodgy broadband and no microphone, and may sound a little Dalek-esque at times. She hopes you’ll forgive the wobble in sound in exchange for the joys of Austen.

In this episode, we discuss Wide Sargasso Sea with writer Victoria Smith. Commonly referred to as the prequel to Jane Eyre, it does tell the story of Antoinette (Bertha in Jane Eyre) but works beautifully as a stand-alone read in its own right.

Victoria Smith is the author of brilliant books Hags and Unkind and is one of the significant feminist voices of our time, so we were delighted to hear her thoughts on this highly acclaimed work.

This is what some of the critics have said about the book:

Angela Carter, novelist and critic:

“The best post-colonial novel of the twentieth century. It’s not just a prequel to Jane Eyre — it’s a complete reimagining of what literature can do.”

The New York Times Book Review:

“Brilliant… A work of fierce poetic intensity, richly imagined and quietly devastating.”

Diana Athill, editor of André Deutsch publishing house:

“Jean Rhys wrote it as though it had to be written — and it did. It’s that rare thing: a work of literature that also rights a moral wrong.”

Time Magazine (Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century):

“A hypnotic and hallucinatory vision of the Caribbean — Rhys reclaims Bertha Mason’s voice and in doing so, reshapes the entire legacy of Jane Eyre.”

Jamaica Kincaid, novelist and critic:

“Rhys understood the cruelty of colonialism and the way madness can be imposed, not born. Her writing is laced with beauty and fury.”

In this episode, we consider Lois the Witch, a haunting novella by Elizabeth Gaskell set against the backdrop of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. With her characteristic emotional depth and historical sensitivity, Gaskell explores themes of fear, isolation, and the dangers of moral panic and in doing so offers a powerful critique of society’s treatment of women, both in 17th-century Massachusetts and Victorian England.

Like many women writers of her time, Gaskell’s work has often been overlooked or dismissed, side-lined as too ‘domestic’ or ‘feminine’ to warrant serious study. A mother of four and a minister’s wife, Gaskell was long boxed into the role of a sentimental storyteller, despite her sharp engagement with social justice, gender inequality, and mental illness in both fiction and biography.

This podcast examines why Lois the Witch as well as considering Gaskell more broadly, who we think deserves closer attention - particularly in light our of earlier episode where we discussed Gaskell with Graham Watson. We wonder: how did gender shape the way her writing was received? What happens when stories about women, written by women, are categorized as ‘lesser’ literature? And what can Gaskell’s nuanced portrayal of historical trauma teach us today?

Aside from Gaskell’s interesting life and treatment, revisiting the time of the Salem witch trials is an interesting topic to consider - the real dangers, the serious threats to the newly established communities leading to the paranoia of the time. Join us as we revisit this quietly radical voice in literary history and consider whether the fear and hostility that communities felt a very long time ago are still of contemporary relevance today. Particularly in light of the idea that sometimes it suits those who are upholding power to encourage paranoia.

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) is one of 19th-century Britain’s most influential feminist campaigners, involved in women’s suffrage, female higher education, the abolition of slavery and passing of the Married Women’s Property Acts.

In this episode of She Wrote Too, historian Jane Robinson tells Caroline about her biography of this impressive - yet now little-known - woman, Trailblazer: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, the First Feminist to Change our World.

Charlotte Brontë’s life was complex and dramatic. A survivor of unimaginable loss, she turned her back on the past to become not only an acclaimed writer but a figure of public fascination. There has not been a biography of Charlotte in over 10 years and in this interview, Graham Watson makes his very convincing argument as to why another one was needed.

In her effort to make sense of it all, Brontë’s friend, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, produced a tell-all biography that revealed secrets of love, rivalry, and rebellion. Charlotte had been treated shabbily by many and Gaskell was out to seek justice for her friend. The life she had begun to reinvent for herself after the tragic deaths of Anne and Emily is often overlooked and barely gets a mention. No more.

In his ground-breaking debut, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë, Graham Watson revisits this story not to sensationalise it, but to restore Charlotte’s voice. It’s a biography that reclaims Brontë’s legacy from the myths that have long overshadowed her.

In our conversation, Graham shares his fresh perspective on the final chapter of Charlotte’s life and how his research sheds new light on Elizabeth Gaskell’s sensational Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, which Graham sees as a whistleblowing exercise ultimately compromised by those Gaskell wished to expose. He reflects on the dangers of tidying up women's lives to fit a narrative, and why the truth matters, especially for those who were written over in their own time.

Graham Watson is a writer and editor who studied English language, linguistics and literature at the University of Glasgow. His first paper, on fraudulent Brontë portraiture, was published in Brontë Studies in 2019. The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is his first book, out now in the UK and from August in the US.

It is to be published in the US with this cover:

Our sincere thanks to Graham for this incredibly fascinating talk on his excellent book. One piece of advice - read it.

In this episode of She Wrote Too, I talk with comedian and writer Andy Gleeks, who also brings his background as an English teacher to our conversation. This is our second episode on Emily Brontë’s extraordinary novel, if you haven’t already, do listen to our first discussion with best-selling gothic novelist Essie Fox, where we reviewed other fascinating aspects of the book.

Few novels inspire such strong and conflicting reactions as Wuthering Heights. It is a story of obsession, revenge, and passion so intense that it transcends death itself. Unlike many of its 19th-century counterparts, which explore love within the constraints of social convention, Wuthering Heights is wild, gothic, and deeply unsettling. It is a novel that resists easy categorization as it is many things; a love story and an anti-romance, a family saga and a supernatural tale, a narrative of social class and exclusion that also carries echoes of Britain's colonial past.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Wuthering Heights is its narrative structure. Brontë gives us a story within a story, mediated by unreliable narrators including Lockwood, the clueless outsider, and Nelly Dean, whose biases and personal stake in events leave us constantly questioning what is true. This fragmented storytelling enhances the novel’s sense of mystery and psychological complexity, as the past seems to haunt the present at every turn.

We also discuss how Wuthering Heights is, in many ways, the antithesis of Pride and Prejudice. Where Austen’s novel is witty, rational, and deeply concerned with social norms, Brontë’s is elemental and ungovernable, steeped in passion, violence, and the supernatural. If Pride and Prejudice teaches its characters to temper their emotions, Wuthering Heights shows what happens when they consume and destroy.

Beyond its gothic intensity, Wuthering Heights is also a novel about intergenerational trauma and about the way pain and obsession pass down through families like a curse. The novel’s themes of power, race, and exclusion have led to modern readings that explore its links to Britain’s colonial past. As Andy observes, Heathcliff, a dark-skinned foundling whose origins remain ambiguous, is repeatedly dehumanized and brutalized by those around him, his suffering transforming into a relentless cycle of cruelty. The novel’s exploration of outsider status, revenge, and inherited suffering makes it feel as urgent today as it did when it was first published.

We consider why Wuthering Heights endures. Perhaps because it refuses to be easily explained. It is not simply a gothic romance, nor a ghost story, nor a critique of class and power but somehow all of these things at once. It is a novel that lingers in the mind long after reading, as unsettling and unforgettable as the howling winds over the Yorkshire moors.

Join us as we consider the many layers of this haunting masterpiece and discuss why Wuthering Heights remains a must-read for lovers of literature, gothic fiction, and stories that defy easy resolution. As Andy says ‘just read it’.

Our sincere thanks to Andy Gleeks and Essie Fox for their fascinating insights.

🎧 Missed our first episode with Essie Fox? Catch up here: