Award-winning poet and writer Gemma Parker reflects deeply with host Amy Mullins on a "fragmentary" writer's life like her own – trapped by the demands of motherhood during a pandemic. As someone who is deeply restless, inquisitive, and has often felt "caged in," Gemma explores with Amy some of life's big questions that arise for her and are explored in her book; What constitutes a meaningul life or existence? Is it possible to live one? And how does one define its opposite – a meaningless life, or nihilism? Are we all, rather, fated to live a life devoid of intrinsic meaning, morality, or value, and can a life of nihilism (meaninglessness) instead be liberating?

Gemma's debut book, The Mother Is Restless And Doesn't Know Why: Finding Freedom In The Cage (Scribner), is a hybrid creative-critical memoir that was written during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

Her book resists simple definition and depicts a writer's life lived, examined, and written in fragments, or "snatches" of time and short reflections. Gemma draws on her life experiences and the ideas and lives of many nihilists like, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Virginia Woolf, in order to understand nihilism and its centrality in understanding human existence and the possibility (or not) of meaning. Most importantly, Gemma discusses with Amy the tension between her restlessness and unrelenting desire for freedom and her deep love for her family.

Gemma Parker is an award-winning poet and essayist, teaching creative non-fiction at Adelaide University. She has lived, worked and studied in Osaka, Paris, London, and Hanoi. The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why was awarded a PhD at the University of Adelaide and a Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Excellence.