Radio & Podcast Patricia Cornwell on Her Dark Childhood and Best-Selling Novels The Book Review 2026 Patricia Cornwell was recently featured on The New York Times “Book Review” podcast hosted by Gilbert Cruz. In the May 2026 episode, Cruz interviewed Cornwell about her new memoir, True Crime, which details her dark childhood including her time in foster care “with a terrible foster mother”. The conversation then moves into her life as a writer, including starting out as a journalist. External Website

Radio & Podcast Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller - Broadway and me Jeffrey Seller 2021 An adoptee, in this interview with Richard Fidler, Jeffrey Sellers talks about growing up in Detroit where he was well loved and supported in his interest in musical theatre. After he moved to New York, Seller worked as a booking agent and also produced a number of successful musicals. Most recently he has produced Hamilton and taken that to Australia where 250,000 tickets were sold out before the first preview of the show. External Website

Artists Ralph Fasanella Ralph Fasanella (September 2, 1914 – December 16, 1997) was a self-taught painter whose large, detailed works depicted urban working life and critiqued post-World War II America. Born in the Bronx, New York, Ralph quit school when he was around fourteen and went to work. Behavioural problems after his father abandoned the family in the early 1920s and went back to Italy saw Ralph spending time in a Catholic reform school on three separate occasions before he was fifteen. After a series of working class jobs from the time he gave up school, and considerable union activism, in his 30s Fasanella began to teach himself how to paint and continued for the next 50 years. He exhibited his work, but did not become well known until 1972 when, after painting for 30 years, a story about him suddenly appeared on the cover of a New York magazine. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Through the Eyes of a Foster Child: My Childhood in Over 30 New Zealand Homes Daryl Brougham 2016 In 1990, at the age of ten, Daryl Brougham was told by a social worker he was useless and would end up in jail. By 1997, he had attended 27 schools, been through over 30 social workers and lived in more than 30 different foster homes. During his 18 years as a state ward he suffered repeated sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Rising above all the abuse, Daryl proved that social worker wrong. External Website

Comics, Comic books & Graphic Novels Manga - The Promised Neverland Kaiu Shirai (Author), Posuka Demizu (Illustrator) 2016-2020 The Promised Neverland is a Japanese manga series written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu. Life at Grace Field House is good for Emma and her fellow orphans. While the daily studying and exams they have to take are tough, their loving caretaker provides them with delicious food and plenty of playtime. But perhaps not everything is as it seems… Emma, Norman and Ray are the brightest kids at the Grace Field House orphanage. And under the care of the woman they refer to as “Mom,” all the kids have enjoyed a comfortable life. Good food, clean clothes and the perfect environment to learn—what more could an orphan ask for? One day, though, Emma and Norman uncover the dark truth of the outside world they are forbidden from seeing. External Website

Authors S Simone Biles - Artistic Gymnast ➝ Andrew Symonds ➝ Robyn Smith ➝ Raheem Stirling ➝ Back to Top

Authors T Making home: Orphanhood, kinship and cultural memory in contemporary American novels ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Lotus Shoes Jane Yang 2025 The Lotus Shoes (2025) is the debut novel of Saigon born Australian writer Jane Yang. Inspired by a family story, The Lotus Shoes is about 2 women living in 19th century China. Little Flower is a maid with bound feet who as a 6-year-old was sold into Linjing’s wealthy family. She becomes Linjing’s servant. Little Flower’s feet have been bound, but Linjing’s father has forbidden his daughter to have her feet bound even though the practice is considered a status symbol. Linjing is therefore jealous of Little Flower who is highly skilled in embroidery too. As the two girls grew up, they are in turns competing with each and friendly with each other. External Website

Television Shows Slow Horses 2022 River Cartright is a main character in the British spy thriller series, Slow Horses (based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron). Played by Jack Lowden, River Cartright is a promising MI5 agent who gets shifted off to Slough House after a very public mistake, Slough House being a site of drudgery for MI5 agents who have bungled their jobs but who haven’t been sacked. River Cartright grew up in the kinship care of his grandfather, David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), a retired MI5 officer. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Name Is Why Lemn Sissay 2020 At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. External Website

Poetry The Aboriginal Mother and other poems Eliza Hamilton Dunlop 1981 Eliza Hamilton Dunlop was raised by her paternal grandmother in Ireland. She migrated to Australia with 2nd husband, Duncan Dunlop in 1838. By the time she was in her teens, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop was already a published poet. Her lament, “The Aboriginal Mother”—published in The Australian on 13 December 1838—was provoked by her outrage at the Myall Creek massacre. On 10 June 1838, around 28 (the total death toll was never established) Wirrayaraay people were slaughtered at Myall Creek Station in NSW. Seven men were publicly hanged for the massacre on 18 December 1838. Unsurprisingly, there was more anger at the execution of British citizens than there was at the slaughter of Wirrayaraay people. But Dunlop was astonished at the backlash against her and her poem. Although she continued to have her poetry published in colonial newspapers, her work was largely neglect after her death in 1880. External Website

Writers Frank Golding 1938- Australian activist, writer and academic, Frank Golding OAM (b. 1938), was in 3 orphanages and 3 foster homes as a child. He was in Ballarat Orphanage from 1943-1953. In 1953 Frank was released from state 'care' and returned to live with his parents. With their encouragement he completed his secondary education and then won a scholarship to Ballarat Teachers College. At the end of 2 years he had done well enough to attend the University of Melbourne. Frank qualified for a Bachelor of Arts at the end of 1960. He then taught in primary schools, in a teacher's college, and in high schools. Frank was also Head of Curriculum Studies at the University of South Australia (as it became), during which he completed an MA at the University of London. Frank is the author of numerous books and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2018 for his services to "child welfare and social justice and to the community." External Website

Performing Arts American singer-songwriter Anita Baker Anita Denise Baker (born 1958) is an American singer-songwriter. She was born in Toledo, Ohio. At two years of age, Anita was abandoned by her mother and raised in foster care in Michigan. When Anita was twelve, her foster parents died and the girl's care was provided by her foster sister. By the time she was sixteen, Anita was singing in nightclubs. Anita Baker is regarded as one of the most popular singers of soulful romantic ballads during the height of the quiet storm period of contemporary R&B in the 1980s. Starting her career in the late 1970s with the funk band Chapter 8, Baker released her first solo album, The Songstress, in 1983. In 1986, she rose to stardom following the release of her Platinum-selling second album, Rapture, which included the Grammy-winning single "Sweet Love". As of 2017, Baker has won eight Grammy Awards and has five Platinum albums and one Gold album. External Website

Authors S Lanai Scarr ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast Episode 237. Marilyn Monroe The Rest is History 2 2022 Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook begin their podcast by justifying talking about Marilyn Monroe on a history podcast by arguing that she is "the most iconic of all Hollywood stars", that she still has considerable "pop culture traction", is a symbol of 1950s America, and because of the film Blonde (2022). Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook wonder about how much we “really know” about Monroe, even though much has been written about her (and there are 2 documentaries just this year). External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Holidays in hell: summer camp with Russia’s forgotten children The Guardian 2025 In this The Guardian article (25 February 2025) journalist Howard Amos talks about volunteering for a month during a summer camp at a state orphanage in Russia. The orphanage took in children with physical and mental disabilities and the summer camp provided games, stage shows and sporting activities. Amos volunteered for almost 10 years at the orphanage but says “it was the first visit that made the biggest impression”: “My closest reference point was probably workhouses or orphanages from a Charles Dickens novel. I vividly remember the smells – cooked food, unwashed bodies, chlorine and urine – and how the children crowded you, grabbing hands and clothes, pinching, pulling hair, jostling and asking questions…Children vulnerable to self-harm were tied up.” External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Growing up in care Áine Kelly 2016 Áine Kelly describes how she began to access healthcare again after humiliating childhood experiences, including being removed from her parents by the police and being placed in the care of the state. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir If Everyone Cared: Autobiography of Margaret Tucker, M.B.E. Margaret Tucker 1983 This is the life story of Margaret Tucker "Lilardia" or Aunty Marg. It describes her family background and stories of life in the Murray-Murrumbidgee area; early childhood at Moonahculla Mission and Cummeragunga; Cootamundra Girls Home; domestic service; importance of religion and singing in Margaret's life; on Aborigines Welfare Board. The book photographs of family members and is dedicated to Margaret's mother, Theresa Clements née Middleton. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Awatere: A Soldier’s Story Arapeta Awatere 2003 Arapeta Awatere’s autobiography, Awatere: A Soldier’s Story, was published in 2003. Arapeta Awatere was born at Tuparoa, on the East Coast of New Zealand. He was taken while still an infant by his mother to Whangaruru to be raised by a relative, Heni Mahanga. He was 6 when he returned to the East Coast. Arapeta Awatere was only 10 when his father died. A year later, his mother died. After his parents died, Awatere worked as a sailor to pay his way through high school. Awatere: A Soldier’s Story is more than autobiography; it includes many of his poems, 2 essays & a memoir of his time in prison. It also includes Awatere’s understanding of Maori language, lore & customs. Apparently, Awatere’s wife had forbidden publication of her husband’s memoirs while she was still alive. It was therefore his grand-daughter, Hinemoa Awatere, who took on the editing work needed for Awatere: A Soldier’s Story to be published. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Way It Is Now Garry Disher 2022 20 years after the disappearance of his mother from her post-separation home, Charlie Deravin has been suspended from his job as a city police officer and is back living in the family shack in a beachside town on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Melbourne and within a walk-along-the-beach distance from where Rose Deravin disappeared. As Charlie begins picking up the threads of his mother’s unsolved case, he tries to track down the creepy guy, Shane Lambert - a former foster child - who was once a tenant in his mother’s house. Charlie suspects Lambert killed Rose Deravin, although his older brother, Liam—and many others in the beach community—think it was her cop husband, Rhys Deravin. External Website