Nikita Gill on Hekate, Female Rage and Justice
HYFYV Podcast: Episode 4
In this episode of the How You Find Your Voice podcast, I was joined by the extraordinary poet, playwright and bestselling author Nikita Gill to talk about her verse novel Hekate. It’s a wonderful book; a coming-of-age story set in the underworld and rooted in exile, survival, and becoming.
Nikita Gill on the artwork for episode 4 of HYFYV
What starts as a conversation about voice quickly opens into something bigger: displacement as an ancient story we still have not outgrown, the brutal politics of whose pain gets erased from history, and what it means to reclaim the figures we have been taught to misunderstand.
Nikita speaks about Hekate as a goddess of liminal spaces, crossroads, keys, the underworld, and the in-between places where transformation happens. She also shares why she wanted to push back against the “winner’s version” of mythology, and how speaking with modern-day devotees of Hekate informed the book’s emotional truth.
We also talk about female rage, the pressure placed on women to stay calm while living inside systems designed to dismiss them, and why Nikita believes there is no point shrinking yourself to appease a structure that will resent you anyway.
This episode is fierce, funny, political, and unexpectedly tender, especially when Nikita speaks about mothers, survival, and the kind of freedom many women never get to taste.
Topics Covered
What Hekate is about: exile, survival, and stepping into power
Retelling myth from the “other side” and questioning the victor’s narrative
Hekate as a goddess of liminal spaces, vulnerability, and protection
Displacement, war, and what happens to women and children
Female rage and why it is feared
Boundaries, freedom, and the moment Nikita first tasted liberation
Story as power: language, propaganda, and what we gather around
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.