Byddi Lee

Questions

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I write fiction and plays. Having been a biology teacher in my early life, I am still passionate about the environment and alarmed about our swiftly changing climate and as such, try to weave that into my writing. My most recent book, Barren (shortlisted for the 2025 Carousel Aware Prize for Independent Authors), draws on my experience with infertility and also my academic experience from my first job as a research associate where I helped construct the oak tree-ring chronology that goes back 7000 years. From that we can extrapolate that our past climate has changed and fluctuated over the years – I found my book’s story in the tree-rings.

 
My speculative fiction trilogy Rejuvenation tells the story of a geriatrician who discovers her elderly patients are getting younger in a post-apocalyptic world globally governed by a tech billionaire. (Released in 2020, it began with elderly people dying from a new and previously unknown disease – and honestly, I do not own a crystal ball!) It questions what we value as a society and where that misplaced value system might lead us.

My first book March to November is a relationship drama set in Belfast that explores our interconnectedness in Irish communities.
 

I began playwriting with two other local writers (Malachi Kelly and Tim Hanna), writing a play about a historical event that happened in Armagh in 1889 called IMPACT – Armagh’s Train Disaster, about a train crash that claimed 89 lives and injured hundreds more but that changed braking systems on trains globally ever after. It was staged by Armagh TheatreGroup in 2019, 2022 and 2023.
 

My play Toxic Relationships, is a climate change satire staged in several venues throughout Ireland by Armagh Theatre Group and coming back to the Market Place Theatre, Armagh at Halloween 2025.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B? 
I wouldn’t say that writing was Plan B as I embarked upon writing before I knew I definitely could not be a parent. I’d been a biology teacher but had moved abroad because of my husband’s job and decided to focus on writing rather than undertake retraining to teach abroad. However, when I learned that having children was impossible, I doubled down on writing and, especially in those painful early days, I could not bear the idea of working with children if I couldn’t have my own.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
I’m naturally curious and my imagination is rampant, so when you put that together ideas just spring forth! This explains why I have a play with a talking earth, moon, comets and dinosaurs, alongside personifications of Big Oil, Industry, Poverty, Farmer, Youth and Consumer. I try to fold in a message with my ideas so it has some purpose.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
There’s a ‘fermentation’ period where I let the idea settle, grow and mature. This is mostly done through thinking while I’m physically doing other things, gardening being my favourite way to ferment ideas but it can be driving or anything. I tend to need a lot of quiet time during this phase so no radio/podcasts chatter etc. Once the idea has ripened enough I will delve into research. I love this process and often fragments of prose are born at this stage.

In full-on writing mode, I write first thing in the morning – ideally before looking at emails or social media and usually over breakfast at the keyboard. Then it's edit, edit, edit...

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
A voice, a purpose and a way to connect with humanity, I suppose. I think it keeps me sane, and allows me to reflect and be mindful in life. It also entertains me and hopefully, others while helping me get and give perspective on moments in life that can feel massive as they happen and need to be managed into something that makes sense.

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
I don’t think it has. I’m still who I am, but now I’m in print the world (if it chooses) has the opportunity to walk inside my brain! I do get a kick out of thinking how every word in my books was once rattling around in my head, and now those words and ideas wander through a reader’s head, and are rearranged into something that, hopefully, is of value to them.

As far as NoMo status, well, I still have no children but maybe my story will linger longer than it would have if I hadn’t been a writer. As a NoMo, I often feel excluded from society, but writing Barren in particular, has pushed through that to some degree. I’m learning that parents simply may not have had the bandwidth to think about the careless comments (i.e. the “If you’d kids, you’d know...” comments) and many are as curious about my life as I am about theirs.

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?
It has been so heart-warming to share my story through Barren. I have received personal messages from people who have been moved by the story, and from people telling their stories. I’ve had fabulous reviews and even received snail mail letters telling me how much a reader found solace in Barren. People really seem to love the story and resonate with it strongly. After years of rejections in publishing, (which was triggering because it reminded me so much of the roller coaster of trying to get pregnant) I’m a little overwhelmed by how positive the reaction to Barren has been, and I hardly dare believe it.

At the launches, people have asked insightful and tender questions, others have shared how Barren has opened up frank conversations between them and their partners, or between them and extended families, leading to open and honest discussions they would not otherwise have had.
 

Parents who have lost children through miscarriage have been grateful that they can share their stories with me. Parents who have relatives who haven’t been able to have children are also sharing those stories. I am delighted to have bridged the gap between parents and non-parents.
 

I feel my being a NoMo is being brought into the mainstream through this and embracing all the different family definitions. In hindsight, I’ve had to accept that to some degree barriers were being erected from my side too, especially initially, when I was working through the grief and the bitterness that infertility brings. I feel a gentle relief now that my story is told.
 

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
It’s awful. We are portrayed as the child stealers, the deviants and the cruellest of creatures. It breaks my heart to see the ignorance that is deployed in literature about childless/childfree people.

I also think that, in stories, non-parent teachers are particularly badly represented, typically as mean, selfish and cruel characters who can’t relate to children. Having one child, or even six children, doesn’t make anyone an expert in children. Yes, a parent may be an expert in their own children (many aren’t) but there are lots of different types of people (and therefore children). Teachers are specifically trained to work with children and in a certain age bracket. In a typical year, a secondary-level teacher will have a caseload of about 150 children between the ages of 11 and 18. Over even a few years, a teacher will gain experience with many issues that affect children (in that age bracket). But often parents hold a belief that teachers who are not parents know nothing about children. When the fact is they have much more practical experience than most parents have with 11 to 18-year-olds.

Often in stories about people who are trying to become parents, the story is resolved by them having children. That’s why I wrote Barren – I wanted the protagonists to still 'win' even if they didn’t end up a parent.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
We care about other humans as much as a parent. We get sad when children are hurt/abused as much as parents do. News reports always do the thing, “...as a mother/grandmother of children this age ...” to express how upset that individual is, as if, by not having children you are not qualified to care enough. That’s grossly unfair.
 

We also need to promote a story agenda for the agency of being a NoMo. That it is enough to simply live the life you have, that you don’t have to fill the space that parenting might have filled (because I now wonder if it would have simply been replaced with another longing ... the quest for the woman you used to be, which is something that seems to bug many mothers) and to live the best life that you can with whatever life has given. A line I have in my book and which I barely noticed when writing it, but jumped out at me in editing was when the spirit of the miscarried baby tells her mother, “...we are not broken promises...” and I realised that applies to NoMos as much as to the lost children we never got to hold.

And that we are valuable human beings, who are often ignored but who have much to offer.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
I plan to keep writing. I’m in the 'fermenting stage’ at the moment but am looking forward to getting to the keyboard stage again soon.