Rose Ruane

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I’m a white, middle-aged, queer, pansexual, cis gender woman, living with chronic illness, with lived experience of mental health issues. I am currently chair of The Adamson Collection: work created in the art therapy studio at Netherne Hospital, by individuals who were compelled to live there during the mid-20th century, and close to completing a PhD exploring the collection through creative writing. I make visual and sound art about mental health and history through a queer feminist lens.

I have published two novels with Corsair Books, This Is Yesterday (2019) and Birding (2024), both of which centre non-parent, female characters in their forties, whose non-parent status is part of their identity, with varying degrees of certainty or ambivalence about it. In both books, the character’s non-parent status is relevant to how they navigate the world and relationships and part of how they reflect on their place within them, at times exploring other ways that non-parents might still be an instrumental part of networks of care and play a loving, responsible role in children’s lives, as well as exploring attitudes of parents to non-parents.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
No, having gone to art school as a mature student and having been primarily a visual artist, I had the privilege of becoming a writer by accident, having probably been a writer in denial for much of my life. Writing was a part of my art practice that grew to have a bigger and bigger role in it, until one in large part eclipsed the other.

And much of that process and the privilege that facilitated it, has been intimately linked to my non-parent status – the space and time to work out what I wanted to do to my life, for that to be so open to change, to go to art school as a mature student, to work as an artist at all, to then change tack responsively to how my practice unfolded, to return to university to do an MLitt in creative writing in my thirties and again to undertake a PhD in my forties and to write the two novels I have published so far. All of that has been possible in the most straightforward way because I have no caring responsibilities and a modest but appreciated amount of financial privilege that I would not have if the cost of having a child was in my life, let alone the daily emotional, physical and time demands of one.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
I think I am always writing and thinking about whether or not change is possible, really. I think I am always writing about whether or not we have a clear sense of ourselves, or if other’s perception of us it at times more acute. I think I am always writing about how the intricacies of the world shape who we are or are not allowed to become, the feelings we permit and forbid ourselves and what effect it has on us when external forces inflict emotional reflection or alteration that is unsought or unwelcome. And so, I think I am always drawn to explore ideas that find characters in a place, or maybe even a precipice where they are working through whether changing or remaining the same has a higher cost and asking questions about the difference between reluctance and inability or impossibility.

I am an inveterate people watcher and I have one of those faces that means strangers frequently engage me in conversation and so there is always some spark in that reality that ignites the instrumental “What if?” which is, for me, always the crucible my characters and stories are forged in. I would love to write fantastically or magically, but I find I am just too tethered to and interested in things that are entirely of this world.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
Honestly a lot of frustration with the chronic health issues that often forbid it. Although, I am recovering from a hysterectomy that is hopefully going to leave me with one chronic illness, instead of two. A lot of frustration with perimenopause and the cognitive fog, emotional flux and unpredictable mental health status that, in my worst moments, make me feel like I will never have an interesting thought or craft a good sentence, let alone allow me to write another book. But, without wanting to play Pollyanna about that, because I really and truly just wish it would all fuck right off, to be honest, I have learned that, for me, writing first and foremost involves removing the expectation of being a consistent or continuous human: accepting that it is rarely the same “me” that sits down to write on any given day. I have developed a sort of mantra “I want to do the most I can with the best I feel” and so every writing session involves firstly working out what state I am in and what is a reasonable expectation as a result of that and accepting that sometimes that is literally nothing, sometimes it is revise a paragraph, sometimes it is write 5000 words in one sitting.

And, of course, the ability to embrace that was and essentially assess and answer my own access needs and live and work responsively to how I am is another possibility created by not being a parent. I think about that every single day as a way of appreciating the good fortune of mine alongside the less so in my circumstances and also as a way of honouring those dear to me who can’t practice their creativity for any reason, including the demands of parenting.

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
So much: a way of moving in the world with purpose, of looking at it, of honing my empathy and respect for others – asking why and how people think and feel and behave as they do rather than the judgements earlier iterations of myself might have unthinkingly imposed on them, which, in return, makes me clearer about my challenges and privileges, kinder about the challenges and more grateful for the privileges.

It lets me asks questions I think it is important to ask and it lets me call attention to things I think are unexamined or unspoken, and when published it gives me a sense of profound connection to my readers and the enormous gift of the messages I sometimes receive, in which people tell me that something I wrote helped them to understand something about themselves or lives or other people in them, which they found useful or cathartic, which is always a part of why I write – to keep company with strangers, in order that, however fleetingly, they and I might feel less alone.

It gives my life meaning and allows me self-expression and to live in a world of ideas and imagination and it allows me to be paid for doing something I genuinely love so deeply, even when it is hard and it slows me to be in the world, even when illness means I am at home or even in bed.

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
Not really. It is an enormous validation of my writing and my ability to create it, but I feel acutely aware that lovely and appreciated as that is, what primarily dictates how I view myself is very interior and dependent on how I treat myself and on the events in my life and health that no amount of being published or praised makes much difference to – being fortunate enough to be able to afford therapy, which genuinely saved my life and sanity, has taught me that.

I do think it has made me even more appreciative of how my non-parent status lets me not just write in the first place but fairly easily do book events far from home, the travel and public facing parts that being a writer occasionally entails.

And it has also made me very aware that there are lots of people just as talented as me who will never be able to write, let alone publish, because myriad and complex factors, including and excluding parenthood and its demands, simply make it unaffordable and impossible for them to do so; in no small part due to lack of funding and support and services in the arts and the wider world.

But I suppose because I do write and publish fiction that centres non-parent characters, it has let me deepen my own understanding of my decision not to become a parent and to appreciate the fact that none of my occasional fears of sudden late onset regret have come to pass, especially now it is a physical impossibility for me to become a biological parent.

Also, when I was writing This Is Yesterday, I realised that even though I am very lucky not to have wanted to become a biological parent and been unable to do so, there was some small grieving in my late thirties, that emotionally I had simply never ever, at any point in my life, wanted to have a child – even as a child when I played with dolls, I always used them to act out my ideas of adult drama. I never, never, never mothered them. It was a small, but not entirely insignificant sadness, realising that emotionally I really do just lack that part and it felt important and cathartic to acknowledge it as I hadn’t before and perversely confronting that lack somehow made me feel more whole.

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?
I’m fascinated by how few conversations others have started with me about that aspect of my writing even though for me it is front and centre, especially in This Is Yesterday. People tend to really engage with the themes around adult family dynamics, being the grown-up child of ageing parents and all that entails or the themes of sexual and romantic relationships, or friendships and our relationships with ourselves and bodies over time but it is rare that people approach me to talk about the themes of how we construct meaning and selfhood and value as non-parents.

But at the same time, I feel very pleased and proud by how few people seem put off by the non-parent status of my characters and how many people who are parents are still engaged by and enthusiastic about my work. And I feel satisfied that I have honoured my own experiences of how non-parents are treated and perceived by society in my fiction and expressed some criticism or challenged that in ways I feel really happy to have been able to do.

And also, I simply accept that as writers, we are simply not privy to the majority of thoughts or ideas people have about our work or us as people or the conversations that people have with themselves or others as a result of reading what we publish and I think, for me, holding that thought that is healthy and I really would not like to know more than I do.

Again, only for me, but there is an extent to which the majority of things to do with my book cease to become my business on publication day, perversely, I think maybe much like allowing a fully-fledged adult child a private life that is largely none of your business unless they choose to make it so or come to harm: a sort of loving letting go.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
I think the more diverse literature becomes in general, the better it is for everyone, so that includes childless and childfree people. I think more writing which imagines networks of care, ways of loving, what families might look like, centring those which are chosen as much as those into which we are born is a truly good and deeply necessary thing, which is not exclusively, but often the preserve of queer literature.

And I think there is some really interesting writing happening around childless or childfree protagonists which challenges stereotypes of sadness or fecklessness or selfishness or coldness, the idea that to choose not to have children is to dislike them or to not want other people’s children to have a big part of your life or to take some responsibility in caring for and loving deeply children who are not your own.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
That childless or childfree female characters are not necessarily alienating for parent readers and I suppose to redress the imbalance to how cis-het male writers are largely unquestioned about the presence or absence of children in their stories while female writers usually have to be asked about and answerable to the extent to which children and parenthood do or do not appear in their work.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
It is as simple and difficult as write another book and see if anyone will publish it. And the ability to answer this question in this way is a result of all in my life, including being childless by choice, that affords me such clarity and ease but also absolute uncertainty about what lies ahead.