Otherhood: Being Childless, Childfree and Child-adjacent

In Aotearoa, more people are living without children and challenging the idea that this makes life somehow less meaningful. Otherhood features essays by writers who are childfree, childless or child adjacent, and who've felt like outsiders or faced unexpected paths. Some chose to be childfree, others didn’t, and some navigate loss or blended families—asking, “Am I a parent, or something else?”

Lil is one of the co-editors of OTHERHOOD: Essays on being childless, childfree and child-adjacent, published last year, and the author of beloved Kiwi coming-out memoir Not That I'd Kiss a Girl, published in 2020. Lil’s writing has been described as “Admirably frank… Even better is her ability to recount what it's like to come to terms, as fully as one can, with one's own place in the world. She’s an award-winning copywriter by day, and has been published in The Spinoff, takahē, Ensemble magazine and more. Lil is currently writing the screenplay of Not That I’d Kiss A Girl with South Pacific Pictures.

Paula Morris MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist, and editor of the anthology Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories (2023). She teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland and edits the Aotearoa NZ Review of Books.

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