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Radio & Podcast John Boyne on The Book Shelf with Ryan Tubridy The Bookshelf 2024 We have 3 of John Boyne’s novels listed on the archive because they feature Care Experienced characters, viz, The Thief of Time (2000), This House is Haunted (2013) and The Heart’s Invisible Furies (2017). In this podcast, John Boyne talks about his enthusiasm for orphans in literature, for those children who are – who have to be – in charge of their own destinies. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots Deborah Feldman 2012 Now a Netflix original series! Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman's growing up in kinship care as a member of an ultra orthodox Jewish group. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. External Website

Writers Xiaolu Guo 1973- Xiaolu Guo (born 1973) is a Chinese-born British novelist, memoirist and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities. Xiaolu Guo grew up first with her grandparents and later wih her parents. She published her first poetry as a teenager. After studying at the Beijing Film Academy she moved to England and studied at the National Film and Television School. Xiaolu Guo's books have been translated into 28 languages. Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017. In 2013, she was named as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists. She is also one of the inaugural fellows of the Columbia Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience That They May Face the Rising Sun John McGahern 2002 The last book written by Irish writer, John McGahern (1934-2006), includes a Care Experienced character, Bill Edwards. "That They May Face the Rising Sun" (2002) tells the story of a year in the of Joe and Kate Ruttledge who have moved from London to live a rural life in Ireland. One of the people they welcome into their home is Bill Edwards, an odd character. Everyone knows that Bill was in a Catholic children's home, that he was sent out to work on a farm at the age of 14 and that he ran away from that first 'placement' because of maltreatment. Joe has a chat with Bill one day about his experiences which is too much for Bill. "Stop torturing me" he cried out (p.13). By the end of the book, the local priest is organising a small apartment for Bill in the city. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Letters to Gil Malik Al Nasir 2021 Letters to Gil tells the story of Gil Scott-Heron (who had been in kinship care as a child) mentoring a young Malik Al Nasir (or Mark T. Watson as he was known then). Malik Al Nasir was born to a Welsh mother and Guyanese father and taken into care when he was 9 after his father was paralysed. He later sued the government for the way he was treated when in care. An accidental meeting between Gil Scott-Hron and Malik Al Nasir contributed significantly to Malik's becoming a performance poet and social commentator. External Website

Films/Videos Christmas Child 2004 Christmas Child (2004). After his adopted father dies, a mysterious photograph, which may be a clue as to his origins, leads a journalist Jack Davenport (William R. Moses) to a small Texas town at Christmastime. External Website

Actors Freddie Bartholomew American child actor, Freddie Bartholomew (1924-1992) was born in Middlesex, London. By the age of 3, he was living with his paternal grandparents and primarily being cared for by his Aunt Cissie. Aunt Cissie took Freddie to Hollywood when the boy was 10. He became an overnight sensation playing the title role in David Copperfield (1934). His popularity increased with other films such as Swiss Family Robinson (1940) and Tom Brown’s School Days (1940). At one point, he was – after Shirley Temple – the highest paid child star in Hollywood. During the 1950s, Freddie Bartholomew moved to New York and worked in advertising. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography Nina Bawden 1995 Nina Bawden's career spans 20 adult novels and 17 for children. Here, and in simple vignettes she takes the reader through her life, revealing the inspirations of many of her books. It describes her childhood evacuation to Suffolk and Wales, and her years at Oxford, where she met Richard Burton and Margaret Thatcher. And, she gives an account of her oldest son, Niki, who was diagnosed schizophrenic. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Sunken Road Garry Disher 1996 The Sunken Road is set in the mid-north of South Australia. It's the story of Anna and her family and friends - one of whom is Chester Flood. Chester's family is a large impoverished Catholic one, reason enough for the community to disparage them. The siblings are dispersed when their parents die; Chester ends up in the local convent which was previously a reformatory. As an adult, he does a stint in prison for the white-collar crime of fraud. External Website

Comics, Comic books & Graphic Novels Orphan Black Orphan Black 2015 Orphan Black is a limited series of comic books based on the television series Orphan Black, which airs on BBC America in the United States and Space in Canada. Sarah's life was changed dramatically after witnessing the suicide of a woman who looked just like her. Sarah learned that, not only were she and the woman clones, but there were others just like them, and dangerous factions at work set on capturing them all. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Thicker Than Water Kathryn Harrison 1991 Thicker Than Water (1991) by American writer, Kathryn Harrison, tells the story of Isabel who was abandoned by her parents and is raised in kinship care by her grandparents. Wrote Scott Spencer in the New York Times 21 April 1991: “Kathryn Harrison has taken the lament of the unloved child and turned it into a kind of psychosexual horror story, replete with incest and mutilation. Abandoned, living in a kind of emotional stupor, the narrator of "Thicker Than Water" was a burned-out case even as a child. She survived her parents' brief, unhappy marriage as if it had been a kind of bloody colonial war.” The story will be familiar to anyone who has read Harrison’s memoir, The Kiss (1997). Isabel ends up having an incestuous relationship with her father when he eventually returns. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Little Big Man Stanley J. Browne 2022 Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born into a Jamaican family in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. In this honest and gripping memoir, Stanley reflects on a childhood and adolescence torn apart by mental disorder. Because of it, he has to adopt the mantle of ‘man of the house’. Forced to scavenge for food, and miss school to care for his three siblings, his life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system. An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley begins a descent into crime, heroin addiction and gang life. It is only when he is sent to a young offender’s institution that he slowly begins to turn his life around. Set against a backdrop of 1970s poverty and racism, Little Big Man is a powerful story of generational trauma, and one man’s determination to heal the wounds of the past. Most of all, it is a book about belonging, and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Throwaway Children Diney Costeloe 2015 Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children. And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family's consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles What is it really like being a Care Experienced Person? Charlotte Armitage 2018 Charlotte discusses responses to Care Experienced People, representations of them, and her hope that future writers and producers will take care in their representations. External Website

Films/Videos Seeking Justice 2023 In this video, Michelle in Adelaide, South Australia talks about her experience of being falsely diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy and the upheaval this has caused within her family. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience All the Colors of the Dark Chris Whitaker 2024 All the Colors of the Dark (2024) by British writer Chris Whitaker involves the abduction of children. The year is 1975 and in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. After 13-year-old Joseph ‘Patch’ McMacauley saves a girl who is being attacked by a man, he is abducted. Saint is an orphaned, tomboy girl who lives with her grandmother and is Patch's only close friend. Saint is determined to find Patch after he is abducted. While he lies alone in a pitch-black room, Patch feels a hand in his and it is Grace who helps him survive. When Patch finally escapes, Grace is nowhere to be found and Patch spends years searching for her. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir News From the World Paula Fox 2011 In her final book and second memoir, Paula reflects on aspects of her nomadic childhood, including the fraught relationship with her mother, Elsie, and her father's attempts to encourage her reading and curiosity about the world. The memoir includes Paula's adult life of raising her children as a single mother and of working as a tutor with children and young people in state care. External Website

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Fiction featuring Care Experience Political Suicide Michael Palmer 2014 When high-society doctor Gary McHugh believes he will be arrested for murder, he turns to old friend Dr Lou Welcome for help. Lou Welcome's best friend and AA sponsor is a care experienced character. Cap Duncan is a former professional boxer and now runs a gym, training Lou and Lou's 13 year old daughter, Emily. Cap doesn't feature heavily in the story but is there in pivotal moments. External Website

Writers Nadia Wheatley Nadia Wheatley was born in Sydney in NSW. At the age of 9 she went into informal foster after the death of her mother. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney (1970) and a Masters from Macquarie University (1976). She was also award an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2014. Nadia Wheatley has written children's books (many of which have received awards), biography and memoir. Her biography of another Australian writer, Charmian Clift, was awarded a NSW History Award in 2002. External Website