We've already heard from Helon Habila and Caroline Clark in this Autumn series of podcasts, and we'll be rounding out the set with Ephameron in the next couple of weeks. But this time we welcome Kasimma and her short story Mama Taught Me That.

This story is set in the 16th century.

"We are not really sure what life was like then," Kasimma explains. "After colonisation, a lot of our culture was destroyed or merged with the beliefs of the colonisers, so that we don't really – in my opinion – have the original culture and beliefs that we had then, before European intrusion."

Some of the most important differences in Igboland – the homeland of the Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria – were around women's rights, she continues. "Everybody was equal. Both male and female owned land, both male and female could do the same kind of jobs. There was no 'A man is better than a woman,' or 'A male child is preferred.' All these things are just debris of colonisation."

Many of the details of life five hundred years ago are lost, so there was a lot of freedom in trying to capture that world view.

"It's mostly just fiction," she says.

Our ancestors may have been more connected with the natural and spiritual worlds, Kasimma continues, so there is a lot to learn from them. "But we shouldn't go back. I don't want to go back. I like my phone, and I like my laptop. I like the airplanes, I like the nice hotels. I love how far we've gone, as human beings, to make life easier for ourselves and to bring communication closer."

Next time we'll be communicating with Ephameron, discussing the weather and her graphic short story .

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This Autumn series of podcasts started with Helon Habila confronting the difficult legacy of slavery in the US. Over the next few weeks, we'll be talking with Ephameron and Kasimma. But this time we welcome Caroline Clark and I Will Go.

Clark tells us she isn't really sure where this haunting story started.

"I could tell you a story about how this story came together," she says, "but it probably wouldn't be the real one."

The author explains how she assembles her writing mosaic fashion, instead of a "linear, chronological manner".

"I think that's what I have to do," she says, "to get my words out there – come upon something from a different angle."

This mysterious process may have served her in poetry, memoir and now fiction, but she isn't hung up about genre, suggesting that her work is "all connected".

"When I've written everything you'll have the video game of Caroline Clark," the author adds, "and you can play it."

We'll be levelling up with Kasimma next time as we discuss history, equality and her short story Mama Taught Me That. You can find her here on the site or via Apple podcasts, Spotify, Acast and Podchaser and more.

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Here in the northern hemisphere it's getting misty and mellow all over again. Time for Autumn 2025 and another fruitful harvest of podcasts, ripened to the core. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hearing from Caroline Clark, Kasimma and Ephameron. But we launch into autumn with Helon Habila and his story Paradise.

Habila tells us how, after twenty years of living in the USA, in this story he's trying to "make sense of America".

"History is not past," Habila says, "it's still with us, and we're living the consequences of that history of slavery in America. To even begin to understand the place, you have to grapple with that history."

Paradise puts different Black experiences alongside each other – a Nigerian girl living in Northern Virginia, a young woman whose mother is Nigerian and whose father is white, and a vision of the Brazilian countryside "filled with Black people". But at the heart of the story are two twins, whose ancestors were enslaved on the Strout Estate.

When they return to the house, there's "almost a beautiful symmetry", Habila says, "a cycle coming to a close".

"You can only imagine that, for them, what it must feel like." To be free people, he continues, knowing their ancestors could never have dreamed of the freedoms that they enjoy today, "that's the contradiction, that's the complexity in American history and the American present, where the past is always in conflict with the present".

Some people want to erase the evidence, Habila adds, to "rewrite history. They want to claim that the slaves were actually happier being slaves than Black people are today."

The pressure on academics, the new boldness of people in power to say out loud what could only be said before in a whisper is "scary" he says, but he has to go on. "The only thing one can do as an artist is just to remind people and historicise these things and try to turn it into art."

Next time, Caroline Clark will be talking about the inevitable pain of the writing life and her short story I Will Go.

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