West Indian writer Jean Rhys (1890-1979)—born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams—was in kinship care from the age of 16.

Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica to a Welsh father & a White Creole mother. When she was 16, she was sent to England to live with an aunt while she finished her education.

Encouraged by novelist Ford Madox Ford, Rhys began publishing during the 1920s. Her early novels tended to portray the bleakness of Europe prior to WWII and the struggles of being an outsider.

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) brought Rhys international fame & a CBE in 1978.