Writers Hugh Leonard 1926-2009 Hugh Leonard (1926 – 2009) was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. He was born John Joseph Byrne in Dublin, but was adopted as a baby and his name changed to John Keyes Byrne. Leonard began his working life in the civil service during which time he wrote plays and acted in community theatre performances. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first major Irish writer to establish himself in television. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote nearly 30 full-length plays, 10 one-act plays, three volumes of essays, two autobiographies, three novels, numerous screenplays and teleplays, and a regular newspaper column. External Website

Authors F Representing Aboriginal Childhood The Politics of Memory and Forgetting in Australia ➝ Street urchins, sociopaths and degenerates: orphans of late-Victorian and Edwardian fiction ➝ Convict Orphans ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Shadow child: a memoir of the stolen generation Rosalie Fraser 1998 Shadow child describes Rosalie Fraser's childhood experiences of separation from her parents while a State Ward in Western Australia and child abuse within a foster family. The story also documents Rosalie's search for her natural family following her marriage, including information obtained from official records. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Dickens The Orphan Condition Baruch Hochman; Ilja Wachs 1999 This study interprets Dickens's work through close analysis of its involvement with the imaginative and emotional implications of orphanhood and of the horror of abandonment that is inscribed in it. It shows how Dickens's ultimate loyalty is to the abandoned child. Indeed, it tracks the ways in which the development of his work is toward an ever more fierce critique of the world from within the perspective of that child. It demonstrates how Dickens's fiction comes to question all the forms that give shape to the self - status, work, citizenship, marriage, parenthood, property - and how it does so from the subjective vantage point of what may be termed the orphan imagination. Its thesis is that the shape of Dickens's novels is also determined by this perspective. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles ABC's Patricia Karvelas on her experience of Parliament's toxic 'sexist' culture and how a childhood tragedy shaped her. Natasha Johnson 2021 ABC's Patricia Karvelas on her experience of Parliament's toxic 'sexist' culture and how a childhood tragedy shaped her. When Karvelas was eight years old, her parents died suddenly and she was raised variously by her maternal grandmother and two sisters, Sue and Voula, who are 11 and eight years older. External Website

Authors B Standing at the Sky's Edge ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dictator's Wife Freya Berry 2022 The Dictator’s Wife (2022) by Freya Berry asks the question: “How complicit are the wives of dictators in the crimes of dictators?” Marija Popa is the dictator’s wife. Her husband, Constantin - the ruler for 30 years of a fictional eastern European country, Yannussia - has been murdered and she is now standing trial for multiple crimes. We find out early in the novel that Marija was adopted as a small child into a wealthy Yannussian family. The narrator is Laura Lazarescu, a lawyer from London who is the junior associate in a team of 3 lawyers hired by Marija Popa. Laura’s family fled Yannussia when Laura was 7. Before that, Laura’s mother worked in the factory founded by Marija’s adoptive family and run by Marija when she was First Lady. External Website

Authors A Paul Abbott ➝ David Akinsanya ➝ Edward Albee ➝ Back to Top

Authors Z Zoey to the Max ➝ Back to Top

Authors L The Dictionary of Lost Words (Play) ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows The Runaway (tv show) 2011 The Runaway is a six-part British television crime drama series, adapted by Allan Cubitt from the novel by Martina Cole, that first broadcast on Sky1 on 31 March 2011. Directed by David Richards, The Runaway is set in the sleazy, gritty world of '60s and '70s London, and focuses on the doomed romance of East Londoners Cathy Connor (Joanna Vanderham) and Eamonn Docherty (Jack O'Connell). As the daughter of a prostitute, Madge, Cathy's life is difficult, especially when everyone assumes that she will be following in her mother's footsteps. But when Cathy is forced to protect Madge from a violent attack by a punter it changes her life forever. Cathy is taken into care and she suffers institutional abuse. External Website

Authors L Founder of the oldest black orphanage in the United States. ➝ Back to Top

Authors A Former Cranbrook student says he was sexually abused at private Sydney boys' school ➝ America's Riches School Serves Low-Income Kids. ➝ An evening with your life your story ➝ Angelina Jolie's casting game with Cambodian orphans sparks outrage ➝ Holidays in hell: summer camp with Russia’s forgotten children ➝ Orphans in Kids' Movies: Let's Stop Going There ➝ Remembering the original Superman ➝ Back to Top

Authors G Living with the past: the creation of the stolen generation positionality ➝ A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults ➝ Reflexivity and Lived Experience of Out-of-Home Care: Positionality as an Early Parenthood Researcher ➝ Fostered Voices: Narratives of US Foster Care ➝ More Than Our Childhoods: A survivor-led participatory approach to out-of-home care life story research ➝ Back to Top

Authors O Strong Black Woman ➝ Back to Top

Authors E A Hidden Intersectionality: Care Experience, Disability ➝ Care Collective Zine - Issue 1.pdf ➝ Kirsty Capes | 'It’s important to have stories about the care experience that are positive' | The Bookseller ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos The Accidental Twins 2024 The Accidental Twins (2024) is a documentary – in Spanish – about the switching at birth of twins in Columbia. Jorge Bernal was 25 when he was suddenly confronted by the possibility that his twin brother was not his biological brother. In December 1988 two sets of twins were born – 1 set in Bogota and 1 set in the rural area of Santander. Because of concerns about one of the babies born in Santander, the baby was transferred to the Bogota hospital. The baby who was returned to Santander was not the infant born there. The documentary explores the difficulties the 4 young men – emotionally & psychologically - face as they realise the ramifications of the discovery. External Website

Writers Jan de Hartog 1914-2002 Jan de Hartog (1914 – 2002) was a Dutch playwright, novelist and occasional social critic who moved to the United States in the early 1960s and became a Quaker. Jan de Hartog was born in Haarlem, Netherlands to academics Lucretia and Arnold Hendrik de Hartog. Jan was young when Lucretia contracted tuberculosis and the boy was sent to stay in an orphanage. Jan de Hartog then went on to study at the Amsterdam Naval College (1930-1931), after which he worked for the Amsterdam Harbor Police. de Hartog began writing and publishing stories in 1934, mainly detective stories. He later added writing plays to his skills and in 1939 his first play was produced at the Amsterdam Municipal Theatre. hroughout his life de Hartog did volunteer work, including at the Jefferson Davis County Hospital in Houston, Texas about which he wrote in The Hospital. Jan de Hartog wrote more than 22 books (some adapted for films) and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the University of Houston in 1993. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Rosa's Child: One Woman's Search for Her Past Susi Bechhofer 1996 Rosa’s Child (1996) by Susi Bechhofer & Jeremy Josephs is the search by Susi Bechhofer for her family. In 1939, Susi and her twin sister arrived in London on the Kindertransport. The 3-year-old girls were adopted by a Welsh minister and his wife and given new identities. Fifty years later, Susi discovers they are the daughters of Rosa Bechhöfer, a young Jewish woman who was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and Otto Hald, a soldier in Hitler's army. Susi Bechhofer’s story became a model for WG Sebald’s character Jacque Austerlitz in the novel entitled Austerlitz. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Movies Christian Alliance for Orphans A listing of Orphan Themed films by CAFO, the Christian Alliance for Orphans. External Website