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Authors V Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Out of Darkness. Growing up with the Christian Brothers Ivor A Knight 1998 Ivor Knight, born in 1934 in Perth, was declared a ‘neglected child’ in 1938 and placed in the custody of the Christian Brothers. He survived the Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun orphanages after which he worked on sheep and cattle stations. In 1968, he joined the Western Australian Prison Service and rose through the ranks to Superintendent. He took early retirement in 1991 External Website

Authors L Edmonia Lewis ➝ Back to Top

Authors J Lennie James (actor) ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Evelyn: A True Story Evelyn Doyle 2004 Told through the eyes of his daughter Evelyn, this is the story of a father's fight to reclaim his children from the Irish government in the 1950s, now a major film. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir All at Sea: Memories of a Coram Boy Gorden Aspey 2010 Gordon Aspey b' March 1934, recalls his journey from the workhouse to the Foundling Hospital a charitable institution that cared for abandoned and destitute children. At the age of three months old he is handed over to The Foundling Hospital a charitable institution that catered for abandoned children. They place him with a foster mother until the age of five He develops a deep filial attachment to Mrs.Tapp the foster mother a good hearted and wise woman who provides him with a secure and loving home. He shrugs off his connections with the charitable past which he feels are not always helpful. He develops a love of boats and the sea but after running into a force 10 storm in 1987 when survival looked to be in doubt, the experience had a devastating effect upon him. External Website

Actors Stanley J Browne ​ ​ Born on December 15th 1970 at The Mothers' Hospital, Hackney, East London, Stanley is the second child of four and grew up in the care system as a young boy from the age of five. After a troubled childhood alongside his struggles growing up in care, Stanley missed out on mainstream education and discovered his passion for acting at the Anna Scher Theatre in Islington at the age of twenty-three, a drama school set up for working-class students which he attended for three years before landing an acting agent. Facing despondency from playing type casting roles, Stanley took a break from acting for almost eleven years, during that time he trained as a counsellor, working with prisoners and primary school children with behavioural issues. Stanley would go on to perform Shakespeare's "Othello" (2011), touring Ireland for three months. In addition to his accomplishments as an actor, Stanley has a passion for music and art. He is a painter and charcoal artist and has a portfolio of work. Having been a singer-songwriter for over twenty years, performing at various acoustic venues across the UK. In 2021, Stanley was signed to Jacaranda Books for his memoir "Little Big Man", due to be published on October 14th 2022. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Black Boy Richard Wright Wright et al. 2008 Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi, with poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred and a stint in an orphanage and in kinship care. He lied, stole, and raged at those about him; at six he was a “drunkard,” hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to "hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo." External Website

Actors Neil Morrissey ​ ​ Neil Anthony Morrissey (born 4 July 1962) is an English actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and businessman. Neil was born in Stafford to Irish parents, May and Larry, both of whom worked as psychiatric nurses. He was taken into the social care system when he was 10. Neil spent 7 years in the Penkhull Children’s Home in Stoke-on-Trent, a series of cottage homes each presided over by a ‘house parent’. The boy only occasionally saw his parents. Neil was introduced to acting at the age of 11 by a drama teacher at Thistley Hough High School, Sheila Steele. When he was 17, Neil was taken into foster care by the parents of a friend. With the support of his foster parents, Neil attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Neil Morrisey is now known for his role as Tony in Men Behaving Badly. Other notable acting roles include Deputy Head Eddie Lawson in the BBC One school-based drama series Waterloo Road, Nigel Morton in Line of Duty, and Rocky in Boon. Morrissey also provides the voice of many cartoon characters, including Bob, Roley, Scrufty, Lofty, Mr. Angelo Sabatini, Mr. Fothergill and Farmer Pickles in the UK (original) version of Bob the Builder. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Call Me Auntie: My Childhood in Care and My Search for My Mother Anne Harrison 2020 A truly original story of life in and after care. The author's own account of being left behind by her mother as a one year old and her life in foster homes and institutions. When eventually traced, 'Call Me Auntie' was the best her mother could offer, but this was just the start of a bizarre sequence of events. Call Me Auntie is a telling account of abandonment, 'Heartbreak House' care homes, family history and survival. It is also one of resilience and personal achievement as the author discovered she also had a brother left behind in the same way, forged a professional career, searched for her long lost relatives in Barbados and eventually came to understand that she 'may be a princess after all'. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood?Tenth Anniversary Edition Richard Rhodes 2000 When he first published A Hole in the World in 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes helped launch and legitimise a decade-long publishing phenomenon—the memoir of abused childhood. In this tenth anniversary edition, Rhodes offers new reflections on the abuse he and his older brother endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent father. He also describes readers' powerful and moving responses to his book, considers his changing sentiments as the years have passed, and provides additional details on his brother Stanley, who remains the author's true hero in this moving memoir. External Website

Academic theses What Effect does Life Story Work have on Life Writing? Deyanna Ricketts 2024 This PhD presents both critical and creative writing that analyses the interactions and intersections between Life Story Work, medical humanities, and life writing. I like to think of this work as plaiting together concepts from these three areas, tied up with a bobble of practice research. Life Story Work (LSW) is a “defined approach which provides the opportunity for children to explore their own history” (Rose, 2012: p26). This intervention aims to help children who are looked after by a local authority or adopted to ‘make sense of their pasts.’ External Website

Academic Articles Contemplating Fictional and Nonfictional Orphan Stories (2004) Dennis Leoutsakas 2004 Throughout our lives we move from one story to the next. Whether we are listeners, readers, writers, or tellers, “we live our lives immersed in stories” (Simpkinson & Simpkinson, 1993, p. 1). From the many stories we encounter, both fiction and nonfiction, the orphan-as-hero stands out as one of the most prominent figures in literature. This paper considers three powerful issues related to orphan stories. First, it analyzes the legendary orphan-heroes used in fictional literature. Second, it demonstrates the differences between imagined orphans and orphans. Finally, after comparing the previous findings, this paper concludes by discussing the value of a new form of fictional literature and suggesting examples of story blending that link traditional fiction with actual narratives. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis J D Vance 2018 The Vance family story begins hopefully in post-war America. J. D.'s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of ‘Hillbilly Elegy' plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. External Website

Actors Brian Syron ​ ​ Brian Syron (19 November 1934 – 14 October 1993) was a human rights advocate, teacher, actor, writer, stage director and Australia's first Indigenous feature film director who has been recognised as the first First Nations feature film director. Brian Syron was born in Balmain, Sydney to Daniel Syron, a Biripi (also known as Birpai) man from New South Wales and Elizabeth Murray from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. During his childhood, Brian learned about his Aboriginal heritage by living with his paternal grandmother at Karuah, 184 km north of Sydney, for long chuncks of time. When he was fourteen, Brian ended up in the Grafton Correctional Centre. By the age of twenty-two, Brian had become a male model and began studying acting at the Ensemble Theatre Company in Sydney. Brian later co-founded a theatre company in Saratogo Springs in New York and did a number of tours throughout the country, including through the southern states where segregation prompted him to direct his attention to Aboriginal issues in Australia. Back in Australia, Brian Styron taught Aboriginal actors, including Denis Walker, Gary Foley, Jack Davis, Maureen Watson and Hyllus Maris. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Predators' Paradise. A Journey of Survival and Resilience Glen Fisher 2019 Predators' Paradise: A Journey of Survival and Resilence is the story of Glen Fisher's childhood in and of boys homes and foster care in Sydney where he was physically and sexually abused. Glen Fisher has overcome a heroin addiction, assisted police in abusers being brought to justice, given evidence at key inquiries, and now provides support for Forgotten Australians and survivors of child sexual abuse. External Website

Artists Ivan Durrant ​ ​ Australian painter, Ivan Durrant (b. 1947) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, one of 7 children. He was 7 when his mother – influenced by the father’s alcoholism- put her children into state care. Ivan lived in an orphanage from 1954 to 1962, but often went into foster care on farms during summer holidays. It was there he developed his passion for birds and animals. After Ivan was reunited with his family in 1962, he developed his interest in painting and held his first exhibition in St Kilda during 1970. Ivan Durrant is now known as an artist who uses art to create “great schock value”. His work is held in many public collections, including in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir At a cost Roy McFadyen 2005 As a child, Roy McFadyen was placed in Melbourne orphanages by his parents and at 15, in the middle of the Great Depression, had to learn to support himself. Swept up by WWII into aircraft maintenance he went on to own a highly respected aircraft maintenance company. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Flo: child migrant from Liverpool Flo Hickson 1998 Memoir of Florence Muriel Brown who was put into a Barnados Home in Essex and then shipped out to Australia in 1928. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Orphanage Boy Szablicki Ryszard 2015 Ryszard Szablicki was born in Melbourne on 5 June 1952 and immediately placed in a foundling home by his mother. He remained in institutional care for over ten years.In Orphanage Boy:Through the Eyes of Innocence, Ryszard recounts his early life in several Catholic institutions through the eyes of that boy, naive and overwhelmed by the perverse corruption and indifference of a system he couldn't hope to understand.In 1996, he joined a class action against the brutality and abuse of one of these institutions. A federal Senate inquiry followed in 2004, investigating similar allegations. Finally, Ryszard received an unreserved apology for these abuses and some peace of mind. External Website