With another Mother’s Day just gone, what does mothering in 2024 look like?
Four relatively new mums reflect on the meaning of motherhood and parenting today, and dig into the significance of a day to honour mothers.
From the physical and emotional highs and lows, to societal and personal expectations, plus all the tropes and stereotypes that go with the gig, how are young women navigating motherhood today?
Explore fertility issues, pregnancy loss, searing love, work-life-identity balance, parenting in the digital age, and ‘having it all’, with Gemma Killen, Angharad Lodwick, Zoya Patel, and chair, Alice Grundy.
Tickets: $10
Alice Grundy has a PhD from ANU in editing and publishing history, the first half of which formed a minigraph published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. She worked in book publishing for fifteen years, has taught literature at ANU and professional editing at UTS, and her reviews, articles and essays have appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Griffith Review, Overland and Australian Literary Studies. Currently she is the Anne Kantor Fellow Research Manager at the Australia Institute.
Gemma Kileen is a queer and feminist writer, researcher and advocate who is passionate about radical social change. Her writing on queerness, disability, fatness and community has been published in many places, including in Archer Magazine, The Big Issue, Broad Agenda and Growing Up Queer in Australia. She is the mum of two special babies, one of whom was stillborn.
Angharad Lodwick is a legal policy officer who works in human rights. Dog-obsessed, she is the President of ACT Rescue and Foster, volunteer instructor with ACT Companion Dog Club and volunteer at Story Dogs. She runs the book blog Tinted Edges and has contributed fiction and non-fiction to Guardian Australia, Feminartsy, Home, Cicerone, the 2019 Digital Writers' Festival and the ACE III: Arresting Contemporary Stories collection (2022). She is currently working on her first novel.
Zoya Patel is an author, editor and strategic communications specialist based in Canberra. Zoya has published two books, No Country Woman and Once A Stranger and is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts with New York University. She writes regularly for The Guardian, The Age, and more, and co-hosts the Margin Notes podcast. Zoya was a judge of the 2020 Stella Prize, and Chair of the Stella Prize 2021 Judging Panel. She has a Master of Communications degree, and works with clients across government and the private and not-for-profit sectors to drive communications outcomes.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work, and recognise their unbroken connection to country. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and are privileged to continue the tradition of storytelling in this place.