In our last episode of Season 3, we're very excited to be featuring a conversation between two wonderful creatives, Shilpa Varma and Adam Fitzgerald, about our upcoming audio drama, When the Forest Watches.

Shilpa Varma, who you may already know if you are familiar with the podcast, is Flame Tree’s writer in residence and the writer of When the Forest Watches. She is a London-based South Asian writer and storyteller whose work explores memory, folklore, and diaspora identity through intimate, atmospheric narratives. Working across audio, theatre, and performance, she is drawn to stories rooted in oral traditions and everyday rituals. Her practice blends cultural specificity with psychological depth, often examining what is inherited, remembered, and quietly carried across generations.

Adam Fitzgerald, the director of our audio drama, is an Australian-British writer, director and award-winning actor based in London. His audio experience includes productions with BBC Radio 3 & 4, Audible, and AAA video games. As a writer, his audio drama Ore received multiple awards and nominations on the 2023-24 International WebFest circuit. Alongside his creative work, Adam works as a freelance audio tutor at several top drama schools.

Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media to be the first to hear any updates about When the Forest Watches.

.....................................................................................................................................

Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator), Shilpa Varma and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Best Indie Press 2024 & 2025 (British Fantasy Society). Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.

This episode celebrates the release of our new anthology, Africanfuturism Short Stories and offers a sneak peek into our African Myths & Tales collection as well. One story imagines the beginning of life, while the other imagines life beginning again after environmental collapse. In a way, this episode, Dawn, shows that endings and beginnings are often part of the same story.

Featuring

‘Like Stars Daring to Shine’ by Somto Ihezue, read by Cornelia Colman (02.50). This is a hopeful take on the post-apocalyptic genre. While it imagines a future shaped by climate catastrophe, it's ultimately a story about resilience and the possibility of rebuilding. You can find the print version in Africanfuturism Short Stories.

‘The Creation of the Universe and Humankind’ from the Yoruba people of West Africa, read by Essay Kidane (26.38). It tells the story of the gods creating the sky, the land and humanity itself, celebrating beginnings, hope and our responsibility to care for one another. Found in our African Myths & Tales Collection.

Biographies

Somto Ihezue is a writer and filmmaker. He is an MFA fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. His writing begins at the intersection of boyhood, land, disruption and joy in Igbo communities. His work has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the British Fantasy Award, the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award and has appeared in Clarkesworld, POETRY, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sauúti and others.

‘The Creation of the Universe and Humankind’ was sourced from the Yoruba people in West Africa. The stories in African Myths and Tales come from a range of sources, mostly contemporaneous with colonial times, written by Europeans but often based on their first-hand accounts of tales narrated to them by natives. More details can be found inside African Myths and Tales.

Cornelia Colman is a Voice Actor, Hand Model and Actor with a background in Food Science. Although her resting accent is RP, her range includes several African and Caribbean accents, other foreign accents, and various English dialects. When narrating, she aims to bring diverse, multicultural characters to life. Hopefully, via using these accents, to enhance the experience and increase the enjoyment listeners have when listening to her audiobook narrations.

This episode was hosted by OIivia.

‘Like Stars Daring to Shine’ is ©2022 Somto Ihezue and was originally published in Fireside Magazine, but more recently appears in Africanfuturism Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2026)

‘The Creation of the Universe and Humankind’ appeared in African Myths and Tales (Flame Tree Publishing, 2019).

.....................................................................................................................................

Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator), Shilpa Varma and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Best Indie Press 2024 & 2025 (British Fantasy Society). Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.

How often do you feel as though you're sailing into the unknown? Filled with hope, anticipation, nerves or even fear? Today's episode explores the emotional highs and lows of change and discovery. Both of our stories follow ships setting out on extraordinary voyages in search of new beginnings, only for those hopeful dreams to take a much darker turn.

Featuring

‘Ghost Ships of Alnitak’ by Alexander Hay, read by Nathan Chatelier (04.00). A heartbreaking account of an adventure through space turned nightmare. Found in our brand new Wars in the Stars collection.

‘The White Ship’ by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Nick (26.40). This one follows a lighthouse keeper whose determination and hope lead him on a remarkable quest… one that uncovers mysteries far stranger than anyone could predict. You can see it in print in our Hidden Realms collection.

Biographies

Alexander Hay is an author who presently lives in North West England, enduring conditions that can be best described as Hoth in the winter and Arrakis in the summer. He has had far too many jobs, including working in a school of anatomy, getting thrown out of a hotel suite by Lesley Manville, and nearly killing someone with a wasp. He has over forty short stories published, with credits ranging from Nature’s Futures to Apex Publishing and Utopia Science Fiction. He is, somewhat inevitably, seeking an agent and writing a novel, like all the other ne’er-do-wells.

Master of weird fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Featuring unknown and otherworldly creatures, his stories were one of the first to mix science fiction with horror. Plagued by nightmares from an early age, he was inspired to write his dark and strange fantasy tales; the isolation he must have experienced from suffering frequent illnesses can be felt as a prominent theme in his work. Lovecraft inspired many other authors, and his most famous story ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ has influenced many aspects of popular culture.

Nathan Chatelier is a British voiceover artist with almost fifty audiobooks recorded alongside thousands of other projects, from videogames to the Mean Girls West End trailer. Check out his demos.

‘The Ghost Ships of Alnitak’ is ©2026 Alexander Hay and appears in Wars in the Stars (Flame Tree Publishing, 2026).

‘The White Ship’ by H.P. Lovecraft was first published in the The United Amateur, November in 1919, but more recently appeared in Hidden Realms (Flame Tree Publishing, 2023)

.....................................................................................................................................

Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator), Shilpa Varma and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Best Indie Press 2024 & 2025 (British Fantasy Society). Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.