Amanda Stern

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I am a native New Yorker (4th generation Manhattan) and grew up in the Greenwich Village of the 70s and 80s, a time when it was the vibrant center of creative and intellectual life - a perfect environment for a young child with a creative soul.

Throughout my life, I've had many careers that reflect my myriad interests: acting, comedy, film-making, live event programming, and producing. However, the one consistent thread has always been writing. As a writer, I work across a broad range of genres and mediums, including literary
fiction, memoir, children's books, Young Adult books, plays, and poetry. This variety makes me hard to classify, which, when I think about it now, is no accident.

In my work for adults, I am drawn to philosophical questions of self-hood, the thin line separating wellness and illness, our blind allegiance to norms, and our conditioned fear of difference. I'm most interested in challenging ideas of what a successful American life should look like. For kids, I just want to make them laugh.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
From my earliest days, my life has always focused on writing and creative work. While I’ve filled my non-mom hours with more writing, it didn’t evolve from realizing I wouldn’t be a parent. In fact, I worried that being a parent would take me away from writing.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
I am obsessively preoccupied with identity and self. How do we become who we are? Why do we choose to remain the same when given tools and techniques for change? What is a self? What is the “I” of me?

I am in constant conversation with my friends, strangers, and the places and things around me. Most of my ideas come from overthinking, feeling things intensely, and walking. Do I come across ideas and inspiration, or do they come across me? I don’t know.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
I have a strict routine. In the morning, I make tea and listen to the news, then take Busy, my dog, to the park. I aim to get there before 9 am, when off-leash hours end, so she can race around. Then, I go to my local coffee shop, where I know everyone, grab a coffee, and a treat for Busy, and usually fall into some conversation. At home, I feed Busy and make myself something to eat. My music is set to alarms. Classical music starts playing at 9:30, signalling my writing time. My energy is highest from 9:30 to 1 pm, so I focus on creative work then. Around 1 pm, I eat lunch, walk Busy, then return to do other work until around 4, when I take Busy out again. I say no to all lunch dates during the week and do not socialize until 4:30 or 5. Any doctor appointments are scheduled late in the day. I am fiercely protective of my writing time.

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
Writing has given my life meaning since I was in single digits. It fills me with purpose and meaning. Even on the many days I am convinced I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s the one practice that consistently keeps me well.

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
Seeing my work in print hasn’t changed how I view myself. Regarding my NoMo status, I write a lot about how the world treats women like me and always aim to challenge the conventional view that women without children, and unmarried straight women, are worth less than mothers, but I can’t say seeing my work in print has shifted my views in either arena.

7. Tell us about the wider reception that you’ve had to sharing your story - has it changed how others have viewed you and your identity as a non-parent?
My work is not entirely centered on my identity as a non-parent, but even the work that is, it’s hard to say how others view me - that’s something I don’t think I can know, since views aren’t often shared, and they often aren’t fixed.

While the reception to my writing, or the writing itself, hasn’t shifted my identity, my existence as a non-parent participating in the world has. It led me start an online and in-person community called MARTHA for single, childfree people who identify as women. This community aims to carve out a space for people like me who are often excluded from the social class of adults who socialize with other parents. It is an effort to be seen and heard for the often excruciatingly painful existence of being a single, childfree woman in this world.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
My goal is to improve the representation of childless and childfree people in literature by writing more in this space. As it stands now, I can’t think of many books that humanize my existence in a way that has moved the needle. That said, I’m certain the work is out there; I just haven’t been made aware of it.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
Our stories are valuable and necessary. All perspectives should have a seat at the table.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
I am working on a novel about a 48-year-old, single and childfree conceptual artist. She is not where she is by choice, but rather by circumstance -like me. It’s been deeply satisfying as well as sad writing this book, but I believe that my life is as valuable and necessary as anyone else’s, and that people should not be judged by what they don’t have. I plan to write more about the childfree adult, particularly the loneliness of wanting a family but not having one.