You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.

My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.

The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.

With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to

helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all

put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your

life, check out BBC Sounds. This is the BBC.

Hello, letters have long been a great staple of novels, driving plots and concealing secrets.

Today we hear from a writer upgrading the form, and we consider the thorny issue of how writers

get paid. But we start with a blast of Middle Eastern

heat in the form of two Lebanese authors exploring the lives of Beiruti women from two very

different vantage points. Hanan Al-Shake lives in the UK but is one of Lebanon's most celebrated

storytellers. In novels like Beirut Blues and only in London, she's challenged

views of traditional women's roles, dared to write about sex, and faced censorship in

some parts of the Arab world. Her latest, the occasional virgin, also centres on evolving

lives and follows Huda, a Muslim, and Yvonne, a Christian, as they shake off their

strict Lebanese childhoods and seek freedom abroad. Meanwhile, award-winning novelist Nada Awa Jara

lives and writes in Beirut. Her latest, an unsafe haven, explores the impact of the Syrian

refugee crisis on that city, with themes around our

sense of home and permanence.

When we brought Hanan and Nada together, I started by asking Hanan where her confident, sassy

heroines had come from.

...