Biography of Care Experienced People Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist Robert Douglas-Fairhurst 2013 In this biography, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst recounts the story of how the young Dickens became England's greatest novelist. External Website

Films/Videos The Last Daughter 2022 The Last Daughter (2022) is a documentary exploring Brenda Matthews' journey of disconnection and reconciliation. Brenda has memories of growing up in a white foster family before she was removed and returned to her Aboriginal family. From the website: "Along the way she uncovers long-buried secrets, government lies, and the possibility for deeper connections to family and culture. The Last Daughter is a documentary about Brenda’s journey to unearth the truth about her past, and to reconcile the two sides of her family." External Website

Performing Arts USA, songwriter Eden Ahbez ➝ Violinist, teacher, composer Anna Maria della Pietà ➝ German, composer, musician Johann Sebastian Bach ➝ Presenter, writer, singer and politician Floella Benjamin ➝ Jazz drummer Art Blakey ➝ Comedian, writer, tv presenter Rhona Cameron ➝ Guitarist, singer, songwriter Eric Clapton ➝ Australian, singer, entertainer Sharyn Crystal ➝ Sierra Leonean-American Ballet dancer Michaela DePrince ➝ Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald ➝ Choir director, gospel musician Kirk Franklin ➝ Rapper, songwriter Professor Green ➝ Dancer, Yellow Wiggle Tsehay Hawkins ➝ Singer, record producer Faith Hill ➝ Singer, songwriter, guitarist Ruby Hunter ➝ New Zealand, Opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa ➝ Singer, comedienne, activist Eartha Kitt ➝ Radio & TV personality Art Linkletter ➝ Musician, actor, activist Willie Nelson ➝ French singer-songwriter, cabaret performer, actress Edith Piaf ➝ singer, songwriter, record producer, composer Trent Reznor ➝ Writer Charles Ignatius Sancho ➝ Poet, musician, and author Gil Scott-Heron ➝ Blues singer Bessie Smith ➝ Record producer, rapper Tricky (Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws) ➝ USA, Singer, Songwriter Jimmy Wayne ➝ Welsh Singer Gruffydd Wyn ➝ US, Singer-songwriter Aimee Allen ➝ TV Presenter, antiques collector Ronnie Archie-Morgan ➝ American singer-songwriter Anita Baker ➝ Pauline Black Pauline Black ➝ British Singer, voice of an angel Colin Blunstone ➝ Singer, songwriter, pianist, composer Ray Charles ➝ Puppeteer Marcus Clarke ➝ Chinese Australian ballet dancer Li Cunxin ➝ Australian singer Karise Eden ➝ Rap Artist, motion graphic designer Ric Flo ➝ Musician, music producer, DJ, visual artist and actor. Goldie ➝ American Singer, songwriter, actress Debbie Harry ➝ Singer, Songwriter US Jimi Hendrix ➝ Jazz and swing music singer Billie Holliday ➝ British Singer Mo Jamil ➝ British Pianist Brad Kella ➝ Comedian, writer, director Stewart Graham Lee ➝ AUS, Singer, Songwriter Joy McKean ➝ Irish, Singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor ➝ Rapper, singer, songwriter, philanthropist Pitbull ➝ Australian singer-songwriter Archie Roach ➝ Composer Erik Satie ➝ British singer-songwriter Seal ➝ Australian, opera singer Stephen Smith ➝ American-Swiss singer, songwriter, actress Tina Turner ➝ Country Music, Singer-songwriter Buddy Williams ➝ Comedian & TV Presenter Dara Ó Briain ➝ Australian Rock Singer Diana Anaid ➝ Trumpeter, composer, singer, actor Louis Armstrong ➝ Mezzo-soprano singer Maroochy Barambah ➝ Tenor and Aboriginal Australian activist Harold Blair ➝ Singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader James Brown ➝ Radio Presenter Pandora Christie ➝ Singer, songwriter, American Keyshia Cole ➝ Singer, entertainer, Australian Smoky Dawson ➝ Aboriginal Australian, Singer, songrwriter Kutcha Edwards ➝ Comedian, author, screenwriter Deborah Frances-White ➝ TV Presenter Larry Grayson ➝ Singer, musician Donny Hathaway ➝ Musician, Songwriter James Hetfield ➝ Singer, dancer, actress, activist Lena Horne ➝ Model Grace Jones ➝ Guitarist-singer-songwriter B B King ➝ Singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist John Lennon ➝ Bandmaster and academic Charles Nalden ➝ US Singer-songwriter Angel Olsen ➝ Singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, actor. Prince ➝ Actor, producer Kamari Roméo ➝ Singer-musician Bon Scott ➝ Judee Sill Judee Sill ➝ British author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian, and columnist Mark Steel ➝ Blues singer, songwriter, musician Muddy Waters ➝ American singer, founding member Supremes Mary Wilson ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast Kiri Te Kanawa (Podcast) This Cultural Life 2024 In this podcast, opera singer Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa (b. 1944) speaks about her amazing life with John Wilson. Included in the conversation is her experience having been adopted and the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation she established in retirement to encourage talented young New Zealand musicians & singers. External Website

Films/Videos Symposium: The Impact of Lived Experience on Care Associated Research by Care Experienced Researchers 2025 Visual and audio recordings of an online symposium with presentations from care experienced researchers and a discussion. The presentations include historical methods and resources, autoethnographic research, an anthology of care experienced stories, and creative writing with a care experience perspective. External Website

Children's Fiction Goodnight Mister Tom Michelle Magorian 1981 The story of young Willie Beech, evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Day I Stopped Crying: A Journey Towards Belonging Victor Sims 2023 Victor Sims spent his childhood in Polk County, Florida, entering foster care shortly after birth and spending 11 years without a stable home or family. Drawing on this experience, he now works to improve the lives of children in care, including through a TEDx Talk on the importance of social capital for foster youth. External Website

Fiction Featuring Care Experience The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1989 The Joy Luck Club (1989) is a novel by Chinese American writer Amy Tan. The Joy Luck Club focuses on 4 Chinese recent migrant families in San Francisco who set up a mahjong club in 1949 called The Joy Luck Club. One theme in the novel is that of lost children. For example, Suyuan Woo abandons her twin daughters in China during WWII to save them as she is nearly dead. She later searches for the twins, but in vain. It is not until after Suyuan’s death that her American born daughter, Jing-Mei, travels to China to meet her long-lost half sisters. Similar to Suyuan, another character, An-mei, was left by her mother, who was forced into a life as a fourth concubine to a rich merchant. An-mei was therefore raised by her grandmother, Popo, from 5 years from the age of 4. Popo taught An-mei to be stoic, to respect tradition & rigid family structures. The Joy Luck Club was adapted to film in 1993. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Fall of Man in Wilmslow David Lagercrantz 2009 Swedish writer David Lagercrantz is the author of 3 novels in the Millennium series - The Girl in the Spider's Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice. The Fall of Man in Wilmslow (2009) is an imagined account of a young Detective Constable Leonard Corell being tasked with investigating the death of Alan Turing on 7 June 1954. Corell becomes fascinated and inspired by the life and character of Turing and uncovers his crucial work during WWII at Bletchley Park. The novel explores the idea of being 'different' enabling the development of different ideas, attitudes towards gay men at the time, and the hypocrisy of the secret service being willing to use Turing until they confirm he is gay. There is little on Alan Turing's extended time in foster care as an infant and small child and how that experience might have shaped the man. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 2020 The Picture of Dorian Gray is a Gothic and philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Dorian was orphaned since birth due to the cruelty and manipulation of his grandfather (his mother’s father). Dorian’s grandfather, Lord Kelso, proves to be a mean and cruel old man through characterizations given by Dorian as well as third parties, such as Lord Henry’s Uncle George. Fully aware of her father’s role in the death of her husband, Dorian’s mother, Margaret Devereux, never spoke to her father again and died within a year. Leaving behind her orphaned son to be raised in a hostile environment, under Lord Kelso’s care. When a naïve young Dorian arrives in Victorian London, he is swept into a social whirlwind by the charismatic Lord Wotton, who introduces Dorian to the pleasures of the city. Henry's friend Basil Hallward paints a portrait of Dorian to capture the full power of his youthful beauty. When the portrait is unveiled, Dorian makes a flippant pledge: he would give anything to stay as he is in the picture - even his soul. External Website

Films/Videos Midnight at the Pera Palace 2022 Midnight at the Pera Palace is a 2022 Netflix - Turkish time travel historical drama television series directed by Emre Şahin starring Hazal Kaya, Tansu Biçer and Selahattin Paşalı. At a historic Istanbul hotel, a journalist is thrust into the past and must stop a plot from unfolding that could change the fate of modern Turkey. Esra (Hazal Kaya), a young orphaned journalist (grew up in an orphanage) in modern-day Istanbul, is assigned to write an article about the upcoming 130th anniversary of the Pera Palace Hotel. The manager, Ahmet (Tansu Biçer), who shows her around and explains the history of the Pera Palace and some of its famous guests. Esra is particularly intrigued by the story of Peride, a young woman who apparently saved Mustafa Kemal from an assassination plot orchestrated by the British in 1919, during the occupation of Istanbul. The Pera Palace truly existed and welcomed guests as famous as Ernest Hemingway or Josephine Baker. Agatha Christie wrote her novel "Crime on the Orient-Express" at this hotel. Based on the book: Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Inheritance Louisa May Alcott 1997 A wealthy English family, the Hamilton's, adopt an orphan who was born in Italy. A long lost letter reveals that she is related to the Hamilton's and has inherited the estate on which she has been living and working as a companion to the Hamilton's daughter. External Website

Writers Allan Ahlbery ➝ Ida B. Wells ➝ Lanai Scarr ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Orphan Rock Dominque Wilson 2022 Orphan Rock (2022) is another of her books with a displaced child as protagonist. Orphan Rock is a historical novel with 2 women at the centre who first meet as small girls in the Protestant Orphan School (Paramatta NSW 1850-1886). Bessie is a toddler when she arrives at the Orphan School but she's removed by her new step-father when she's about 9 years old. Lottie is older than Bessie and looks after the younger girl. We don't know why Lottie is in the Orphanage, ie, whether she's been abandoned, removed by the state or orphaned. Bessie is the protaganist for 2/3s of the novel, followed by Kathleen, Bessie's daughter. Lottie is more in the background, but playing a crucial role. The women experience financial hardship, loss and grief, much of which is caused by what is happening in Sydney at the time. They also have times of respectability and financial success. Dominque Wilson demonstrates a commitment in her story to the characters most marginalised in colonial Sydney (and even now), characters who are capable and resilient but whose lives are precarious. External Website

Films/Videos Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues 2022 What is being called the “definitive documentary” about the life of Louis Armstrong was directed by Sacha Jenkins and released in October 2022. The documentary, called Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues, uses rich archival material to tell the story of the legendary jazz trumpeter - his childhood, rise to fame, constant encounters with racism, pioneering of improv…There’s also the story of how Armstrong invented scat singing. Louis Armstrong might well have been seen by many as a “subservient Uncle Tom figure” during the Civil Rights movement, but that’s not the man Jenkins shows. Instead, Louis Armstrong is presented as a courageous man negotiating a tight rope between the mainstream white community and the Black community he came from. External Website

Radio & Podcast What Just Happened? LRB Conversations 2021 A conversation between David Trotter and Joanne OLeary about the novels and stories of Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973). It was the cleft between heredity and environment that influenced Elizabeth Bowen to become a writer, says David Trotter. Elizabeth Bowen was orphaned at the age of 13, her second dislocation, the first being the move from Ireland to England after her father died when she was 6. Those early dislocations also affected what she wrote about, Trotter insisting there "are more weird households per novel" in Bowen's work than in other comparable writers. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphan of Salt Winds Elizabeth Brooks 2019 Virginia begins the novel as a ten-year-old orphan, alone in a puzzling and difficult adult world. Having grown up in a children’s institution, without the safety-buffer of familial love, she is unable to take anything for granted. She sees her newly adopted home, Salt Winds, with a vision that is both anxiously perceptive and childishly skewed. England, 1939. Ten-year-old Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds, a secluded house on the edge of a marsh, to meet her adoptive parents?practical, dependable Clem and glamorous, mercurial Lorna. The marsh, with its deceptive tides, is a beautiful but threatening place. Virginia's new parents' marriage is full of secrets and tensions she doesn't quite understand, and their wealthy neighbor, Max Deering, drops by too often, taking an unwholesome interest in the family's affairs. Only Clem offers a true sense of home. War feels far away among the birds and shifting sands?until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh, and Clem ventures out to rescue the airman. What happens next sets into motion a crime so devastating it will haunt Virginia for the rest of her life. Seventy-five years later, she finds herself drawn back to the marsh, and to a teenage girl who appears there, nearly frozen and burdened by her own secrets. In her, Virginia might have a chance at retribution and a way to right a grave mistake she made as a child. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphan Collector Ellen Marie Wiseman 2020 The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman is set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, 13-year-old German migrant Pia Lange is left with her 4-month old twin brothers after her mother suddenly dies. The chronically shy child manages as best she can until she runs out of food. She then leaves the tiny boys on their own while she scouts neighbouring apartments, without much luck. Venturing outside and into a wealthier area, Pia collapses on the pavement, waking up 6 days later in a church-hospital. A few days later still—when she is finally recovered—Pia is dropped off at an orphanage where she’s put to work looking after babies, all the time feeling anxious and guilty about leaving her brothers and wondering if they’re still alive. External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp TimeOut Ross Willis 2019 In Ross Willis’s emotive, strange debut play, a newborn pair of twin girls slither and kick their way into a world that doesn’t know what to do with them. So they’re separated. One is raised by a ‘soggy lady’ who soaks in the tub all day, too depressed to care for her. The other one is raised by a she-wolf in a forest of rehomed children. ‘Wolfie’ uses its own feral language to howl out the pain of kids who get failed by Britain’s care system, and it’s powerful and mystifying by turns. The central twins in Lisa Spirling’s production are played by Sophie Melville (star of ‘Iphigenia in Splott’) and Erin Doherty; they’re both fascinatingly good actors, and it’s a joy to see them in Theatre503’s intimate space, which has been transformed into a kind of space-womb by designer Basia Binkowska. Round mirrors sparkle from its walls, and Melville and Doherty leap across it in brightly coloured boiler-suits, deftly handling this text’s sudden shifts of location and tone. Its best moments use surreal images to capture something real. Brenda, who works in a hard times charity, literally cuts out her kidney and throws it at one of the twins, in a gorily vivid metaphor for middle-class guilt. Or when a mega-obsessive doting mother gets high by snorting her own child’s powdered milk teeth. Other parts feel a bit more opaque. The foster system is imagined as a forest where kids are raised by owls or bees or foxes, as overseen by the lofty, compassionless trees. It’s hilarious, but its whimsical enviro-satire paints the world of fostering as impossibly far away from the ‘real world’, when foster parents are just as human as birth ones. And even though they’re thickly coated in woodland whimsy, the beats of this story’s birth-to-adulthood narrative can feel a bit familiar. External Website

Authors L Libraries Tasmania ➝ Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through his Sherlock Holmes stories ➝ Logan Steiner on Learning Life Lessons from Anne of Green Gables ➝ Care leavers met with Jacqueline Wilson to debate the true reality of care ➝ Life story books and later life letters ➝ Back to Top