How You Find Your Voice

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• The emotional complexity of friendships formed in youth• Creative admiration and rivalry between friends• The strange grief of friendship breakups• The ethics of fictionalising shared experiences• Who owns a story when two people have lived it together• Creative ambition and the realities of becoming a writer• The role of circumstance, time and opportunity in creative life• Writing towards questions you do not yet know the answer to• Sarvat’s approach to writing by “chasing the feeling” of a moment
 
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?
In this episode of How You Find Your Voice, host Jessie Huth speaks with singer, songwriter, DJ and producer Ngaio Anyia about the journey of losing and reclaiming voice over time.
Ngaio shares how childhood bullying once led her to stop speaking altogether, and how years later a physical vocal crisis forced her into silence again. Both moments became turning points that reshaped her relationship with music, identity and creative power.
Together they explore women in music production, creative confidence, rave culture, as well as the work of growing into your voice and finding your joy. This is a conversation about creative identity, rest, resilience and what it really means to find your voice in different seasons of life.
 
Topics Covered
Losing your voice both literally and metaphorically
Childhood bullying and early silence
Music as ritual, connection and community
Women in music production and representation
Creative control and stepping into production
Voice texture and how it changes over time
Rave culture and safer dancefloors
Building Booty Bass in Bristol
Creative burnout and recovery
Why rest matters for creative longevity
 
About Ngaio Anyia
Ngaio Anyia is a multi-hyphenate creative: a singer, songwriter, DJ, producer, community creator and inclusion and diversity consultant. Ngaio is a versatile artist, known for her bass-heavy DJ sets, as well as her powerhouse vocal range. Her music oozes with intricate jazz harmonies, African percussion and truth-laden spoken word. Ngaio confronts the politics of black bodies, whilst poetically unravelling her mixed-race identity.  You can read more about Ngaio and her work 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. 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
What drew Nikita to Hekate, goddess of crossroads, keys, liminal spaces and magic.
How Hekate begins with exile and displacement after the Titanomachy, echoing the realities of refugees and conflict in the modern world.
How family history shaped Nikita’s politics and interest in displacement.
What happens to women and children on the losing side of war, and why history often erases it.
Why Nikita spoke to modern worshippers of Hekate and what she learned.
Hekate as a goddess of survivors, including survivors of sexual assault and abuse.
How patriarchy attempts to neutralise rage and why female anger is politicised.
Mothers, the absence of a village, and why maternal voices are ignored.
How stories and language shape politics, and how populists use narrative.
What it means to find your voice when the world wants you to shrink.
 
Quotes to Listen For
“There is no point making yourself so small, that you live half a life, to appease a beast that hates you anyway.”
“Poets are the emotional historians of humankind.”
“If you want to find where fascism starts, it starts in language.”
 
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.Follow Nikita on Instagram 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.
Sally’s latest novel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, reimagines the Norse mythological figure of Hel, ruler of the underworld, a character long caricatured as monstrous and rarely allowed a voice of her own. Together, Jessie and Sally explore why the Norse goddesses deserve their time in the limelight, how feminist retellings can reclaim silenced figures, and what myth can teach us about death, ageing, and becoming.
They also talk about memory as both a personal and cultural force, Sally’s move into fiction later in life, and the imaginative leap required to trust your own voice, especially after decades spent telling other people’s stories.
 
Topics covered
Why Sally was drawn to the Norse figure of Hel
Feminist myth retellings and reclaiming silenced voices
Norse mythology vs Greek mythology
Memory, storytelling and cultural inheritance
Writing fiction later in life and why creativity has no expiry date
The courage to leap into imagination and inhabit characters fully
Holding light and darkness together in art and life.
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
The extraordinary life of Pamela Churchill Harriman
Why so many influential women have been written out of history
The cost of being in the room when power belongs to men 
How biography can restore voice, authority and complexity
Sonia's painstaking process as biographer
What women like Pamela Churchill Harriman still have to teach us today
The uneasy echoes of the period leading up to the Second World War and our present moment.
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.
Together they explore authenticity, memory, and the vulnerability of publication, as well as the ways in which writing can be empowering and sustaining. This is a thoughtful, honest conversation about creativity, self-inquiry, and finding your voice as narrator. 
 
Topics covered
Into Being and the long process of developing a writing voice   
Sins of My Father and the complexities of writing about family
The role of editors in shaping memoir
Psychoanalysis, reflection, and self-inquiry in writing
Authenticity, vulnerability, and being read
Writing as an empowering and healing practice
 
Keywords
voice, women’s voices, writing, creativity, memoir, personal narrative, family, truth-telling, Lily Dunn, Sins of My Father, Into Being
About Lily Dunn
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 
Listen and follow
How You Find Your Voice
If you enjoyed this conversation, you can follow the podcast for future episodes.