Including over fifty writers from diverse ethnic and demographic communities (representing parents/grandparents/matua, offspring/rangatahi, educators, doctors, social workers, researchers, creatives and other disciplines) Rere Takitahi/Flying Solo eviscerates the lived experience of an often neglected and misunderstood sector of society, focusing attention on aspects of their lives that will resonate with readers who have experienced similar.

From Katherine Mansfield’s sinister story about an abandoned, single mother trying to survive in early 19th century rural New Zealand, to Jess Young’s moving poem about wet nappies hanging throughout the house while her milk lets down during her WINZ appointment, to Fiona Farrell’s intellectually disabled Skinny Louie, who births her child all alone in the orchid house at the Dunedin Botanic Gardens, to Alexandra Balm’s mother and son migrating to New Zealand from eastern Europe, to Michael Botur’s solo father going to great lengths to support his little girl, Rere Takitahi/Flying Solo explores the fates of alternatively-structured families and single parents through short and micro-fiction, essay, memoir, poetry and reportage.