Authors E Being Billy ➝ Back to Top

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles The Show Must Go On: On Billie Holiday's Last Live Performance Literary Hub (Billie Holliday) 2024 In this moving article Paul Alexander talks about the last months of Billie Holliday’s life. He includes the final formal interview she gave to a journalist, to Mary Sampas—not that Billie Holliday knew at the time it would be her last. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Childhood: A Memoir Shannon Burns 2022 In this powerful memoir, Australian academic and writer Shannon Burns describes his difficult childhood being bounced from difficult situation to difficult situation, including foster care, kinship care and respite care. Along the way he develops a number of skills which enable him to survive, and later to thrive. These include reading (a welcome escape), writing, and an ability to adapt. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles On Tracker Tilmouth's Trip to the UN in Geneva Literary Hub 2025 Tracker Tilmouth (1954-2015) is a legendary Aboriginal Australian activist. He grew up on the Croker Island Mission from the age of 4, then went to high school in Darwin. In Darwin he was moved around various residential & foster care homes. Award-winning Aboriginal Australian writer Alexis Wright published an award-winning collective biography of Tracker Tilmouth in 2017 https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/tracker In this LibHub article, Alexis Wright has written about the time Tracker Tilmouth took a contingent of Aboriginal Australians from Central Australia to the UN in Geneva https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/tracker External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Left unsaid: a triumph of sibling love over parental neglect & institutional care Margo O'Byrne 2009 The journal of Margo O'Bynre from life in an orphanage in Queensland to community development work in Western Australia. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Daffodils - Audiobook Louise Beech 2022 2019. Dawn. The River Humber. A misty February walk. Surprise early daffodils. A picture taken. Then forgotten. Because five hours later, my world shattered. My mother jumped off the Humber Bridge. Had those yellow flowers not delayed me, I might have been there. Could I have stopped her? In the aftermath of this violent act, I turned to my writing, to my beloved siblings, to our only uncle. I was forced to look at events that led to this suicide attempt. At relationships wrecked by alcoholism. At chronic depression. At our care records. At my childhood. At my mother. At buried trauma never fully explored before. At myself.... When I much later found the picture of those surprise daffodils, I knew it was time to write about that day. I began typing the story that inspired so many of my fictional characters, that shaped the testing things they endured. My own story. External Website

Television Shows Ripley (TV series) 2024 Ripley (2024) is an American psychological thriller based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr Ripley (1955). Available on Netflix, Ripley begins in 1950s New York. Tom Ripley, an aging conman, is hired by wealth Herbert Greenleaf to persuade his son, Dickie Greenleaf, to return home from Italy. Soon, Tom lies his way into Dickie’s life, gaining his trust and moulding himself around Dickie’s personality. We learn early in the series that Tom Ripley was orphaned as a small boy and raised by an aunt. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Scent of my Mother's Kiss Melene Fawdry 2015 Originally published in 2007 as The Little Mongrel - free to a good home, The Scent of my Mother’s Kiss includes a new chapter on Rock Lynn House, a Salvation Army Maternity Home in West Launceston that operated between 1900 and 1960. This book has been written from the perspective of an adoptee, tracing her formative years from the blank slate of birth to the verge of adulthood and the relentless search for the key that would erase the debilitating fugue of not knowing. The child who is placed with adoptive parents soon after birth is denied the experience of the biological sequence that begins in the womb, the merging of the physiological with the psychological that forms the post-partum bond. The resultant collision between the needs of the adoptive parent and adoptee has the capacity to magnify the pain for each and shatter the illusion irrevocably. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience One Another (Novel) Gail Jones 2024 Eminent Australian writer Gail Jones has recently published a novel in which she fictionalises the life of Care Experienced Polish-British novelist, Joseph Conrad. In One Another, Jones has a Tasmanian student, Helen, completing her PhD thesis on Conrad at Cambridge University in 1992. The novel includes Helen’s manuscript on Conrad, along with an account of Helen’s relationship with Justin. The two stories interact with each other, including Conrad’s connections with Tasmania. Two other Care Experienced characters in the book too. Helen's mother who was in an orphanage from about the age of 9, and a friend of Joseph Conrad's, Irish nationalist Roger Casement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement). Gail Jones says that Conrad & Casement "are connected by orphanhood - each raised by an uncle - and by their shock at the exploitation and cruelty they daily witness" (146) in the Congo. Casement was executed for treason on 3 August 1916 at Pentonville Prison. External Website

Authors R Vicki Roach ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir The Sixteenth Round Rubin Carter 1974 Rubin Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey, 1 of 7 children. He was 11 when he stabbed a man and was sent to Jamesburg State Home for Boys. He escaped after 6 years and enlisted in the army, where he did well. Rubin Carter began his boxing career in 1961. He and another man were convicted of murder in 1967. Written from prison, The Sixteen Round tells of Carter's struggles and triumphs and in the wake of publication, a number of celebrities took up his cause, with Bob Bylan writing his now classic, "Hurricane" in Carter's honour. External Website

Films/Videos Stormbreaker 2006 Stormbreaker (2006) is the first adaption of Anthony Horowitz's novel series, Alex Rider. Teenage Alex is living in kinship care with his uncle. When uncle Ian dies, Alex finds out his unclde was an MI6 agent who was murdered. Alex is then recruit to the Special Operations Division of MI6, is sent for training and is sent off on his first mission to investigate a billionaire who is donating computer systems code to UK schools. External Website

Academic Articles A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care Yujie Zhao, Jacinta Waugh & Philip Mendes 2025 A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care (2025) is a recent publication in Children Australia (30 June 2025, Volume 47, Issue 1). The authors begin by arguing that young people leaving the Australian state care after having been in residential are a vulnerable group & that within that vulnerable group, young women face specific challenges. They conclude that young women leaving residential care do have different experiences compared to young men but they have not usually been the focus of research. External Website

Radio & Podcast How Stephen sang himself to life Conversations (Stephen Smith) 2023 Australian opera singer Stephen Smith was in foster care as a child. He left school at 15 and was homeless for a time. At age 17, Stephen was working at a department store in Melbourne when a colleague suggested he take singing lessons. He went for an audition to the Victorian College of Arts, got himself a Bachelor of Arts, and toured the world as an opera singer for 20 years. You can hear more of Stephen’s incredible story on this Conversations podcast. External Website

Films/Videos The Department 2021 This documentary aired in Australia on Sunday 10 October. It was billed as "a look inside the never-before-seen New South Wales child protection system, following careworkers across the state." The documentary explores the experiences of parents who have lost their children to the state as well as Dept workers charged with protecting children. The Department acknowledges Australia's history of removing First Nations children on racist grounds, but does not acknowledge other problems resulting in state and federal inquiries since the 1990s. External Website

Authors Q AUTHORS Q ➝ Back to Top

Authors T The Queen's Gambit (novel) ➝ The Hobbit ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Memoirs Mikhail Gorbachev 1996 The former Russian leader who dismantled his country's empire offers his long-awaited autobiography, recounting his childhood, rise within the Party, his disenchantment with communism, his relations with the U.S., and his attempt to create a peaceful revolution. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Shadow and Bone (novel) Leigh Bardugo 2012 Shadow and Bone, written by Leigh Bardugo, is a fantasy adventure narrated by teenage orphan, Alina Starkov. This is the first book in the Grisha trilology. The sequel, Siege and Storm, was published in 2013, and the final in the series, Ruin and Rising, was published in 2014. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Belgium found guilty of crimes against humanity in colonial Congo The Guardian 2024 On Monday 2nd December 2024, Belgium was found guilty of crimes against humanity for the forced removal of 5 mix-raced children from their mothers in colonial Congo. The ruling, by the Brussels Court of Appeal, came after years of legal wrangling by these women and a 2021 ruling by a lower court which rejected the women’s complaint. The 5 five women were among an estimated 5,000 to 20,000 mixed race children stolen from their Congolese mothers in the former Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The children were taken to distant Catholic missions and sometimes shipped to Belgium. In 2019, then Belgium prime minister, Charles Michel, apologised for the kidnapping of mixed race or metis children. Two years previously, the Catholic church had apologised for its role in the scandal. External Website