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The 8th March marks International Women’s Day. What better way to celebrate than listening to one of a series of incredible downloads, hosted by inspiring women, to entertain your ears? From coming-of-age tales, to hard-hitting interviews, to insightful sessions with a relationship guru – here are seven of the best.

In a new audiobook for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4, Nicola Coughlan (from TV hit Derry Girls) reads an abridged version of Michelle Gallen’s brutally funny novel Big Girl, Small Town.

It centres around awkward, overweight, opinionated, and misanthropic 27-year-old Majella O’Neill, who lives in the stiflingly small (fictional) town of Aghybogey near the Northern Irish border. Every day is the same: she dresses in the same clothes, goes to work in the local chipper (“A Salt and Battered!”), has the same takeaway dinner (microwaved fish and chips) and watches reruns of Dallas in bed. She also looks after (and cleans up after) her alcoholic mother; her dad disappeared during the Troubles, and no one knows if he’s dead or alive.

But Majella's safe routine is disrupted when her grandmother, who was savagely beaten during a break-in, dies. Majella is desperate for things to return to normal, but the tragedy also makes her realise there could be more to life – outside of her small border town – after all.

Listen to Big Girl, Small Town, read by Nicola Coughlan

For those of us who can’t get enough of the Woman’s Hour host, Jane Garvey is the voice of another hugely popular Radio 4 podcast, along with The Listening Project’s presenter Fi Glover.

On Fortunately, the formidable pair put the world to rights, and share rambling musings on their own lives, before being joined by a guest from Radio, TV or podcasting – to share stories they probably shouldn’t.

Guests who have dropped by for a cuppa, candid catch-up, and a flapjack or two include Love Island star Dani Dyer, Strictly sensation and tennis aficionado Judy Murray, and football legend and Match of the Day regular Ian Wright.

Fortunately is a frank look behind the scenes, which is as irreverent as it is intimate – and we challenge you not to fall in love with it.

Listen to Fortunately

is a new podcast by – a production company aiming to create more opportunities for minority talent, both in front of and behind the mic. With this new series, they’re turning International Women’s Day into International Women’s Month, with 31 podcasts from 31 women across 31 days.

Anthems is “a collection of original manifestos, speeches, stories, poems and rallying cries written and voiced by exceptional women” – from all works and walks of life – that celebrate and contemplate what it means to be female.

Episodes include Nourish, read by Ruby Alice Tandoh – the baker, columnist, author and runner-up on series four of The Great British Bake Off – and Sur-thrival, read by award-winning author, illustrator and performance poet, Laura Dockrill.

Other powerful voices in the series include that of Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, Vice editor Zing Tsjeng, and Syrian poet and activist Lisa Luxx.

Adults is the latest, devastatingly funny and moving book from critically-acclaimed author Emma Jane Unsworth (whose novel Animals was adapted into a 2019 feature film). This ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 abridgement is read by Jessica Raine of Call the Midwife fame.

Its protagonist is Jenny, a thirty-five-year-old who’s desperately trying to find her place in the world. Sure, she’s a grown-up in theory – she owns her own house and has a job writing for an achingly hip magazine – but she certainly doesn’t feel like it. She’s broken up with her boyfriend Art (who she hoped might have been her forever man), and she’s clearly not cutting-edge enough for her role at work (and spends all day online-stalking flawless woman on social media).

Meanwhile her friend Kelly really does have grown up concerns: a son, and bills to pay. To make matters a whole lot worse, her mum has landed on her doorstep, uninvited, to save the day…

Listen to Adults, read by Jessica Raine

Jane and Jenni interview incredible and inspiring people: from award-winning writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who talks Fleabag, fame and female friendships), to Hollywood director Greta Gerwig, to the mothers coping with their children’s cancer diagnoses – to name just a few. And it explores big issues like loneliness, domestic violence and infertility.

Jane explains why she thinks the show is so successful: “The running order is such an incredible cocktail of things that everybody will find something they are interested in, something they want to know more about, or something they want to tell their mother, daughter or friend – that’s why it works.”

Listen to the Woman's Hour podcast