David Owen Kelly began his writing career while living in a rundown caravan in the family yard. He'd returned home to Brisbane to care for his dying mother. He was 30 and thought his life was over.
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Now a resident of Cooks Hill, Kelly has since authored two books - Fantastic Street and the recently released State of Origin. He has completed a Masters and PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and teaches a regular memoir course at The Creative Word Shop in Wickham.
Being published was unexpected twist for a young man who had failed high school English. "I was always wagging," Kelly says.
But Kelly's life has been anything but straightforward.
Growing up as an adopted child within a mix of fostered, adopted, step and blood related children; Kelly's complex family dynamic encompassed many critical intersections. While Kelly describes moments of happiness and connection, there is also immense darkness and struggle - foster brothers from the Stolen Generation, a terrorising and abusive stepfather, and the formation of his identity during a time when Queensland was in hostile support of legislative homophobia.
However, this concoction of circumstance proved fertile ground for Kelly's writing. Journals that Kelly kept during his difficult time in the caravan resulted in the foundations of his first novel Fantastic Street.
"I knew I had a story - this family story. But I'd never written anything before," Kelly says.
Completed as part of his Creative Writing Masters at the University of Newcastle, Fantastic Street was described by award-winning Australian author Helen Garner as "a desperate, dreamily hilarious family story, bright with pain and love".
"Fantastic Street is really a revenge fantasy against my stepfather. It was a way for me to work out the family dynamics, and to have an ending that I wished had happened," Kelly says.
This year, Kelly has released a memoir, State of Origin, with local publishing house Puncher and Wattman. Traversing the eastern Australian coastline from Newcastle to Palm Island, State of Origin follows Kelly's search for his missing Indigenous foster brothers who had run away from home on the same night in 1980. It speaks to the power of shared childhood while brutally dissecting the concept of family.
Kelly uses the children's role-playing a game about the Romanovs, the assassinated Russian Royal family, to reveal the power structures at work in his troubled family.
"The idea of family in this book is about the children and adults that I grew up with, but it's also about those kids that didn't make it into our cursed family," Kelly says.
In particular, Kelly talks of Sasha, the birth sister of his foster brothers, who makes a brief but heartbreaking appearance after staging a hunger strike in order to reconnect with her brothers.
"She is one of my main reasons for the book to exist. That's what I am most proud about. Otherwise her story, her bravery and strength, would have just disappeared," Kelly says.
"Whether I've got a right to tell that story or not, that's up for others to decide, but for me it was important."
Throughout the memoir is Kelly's steady examination of the legitimacy of his own claim of brotherhood as a non-Indigenous man to his Indigenous brothers. It is an unfalteringly honest look at the unintentional ways in which non-Indigenous society contributes to systems of oppression.
"I was always interested in owning up to that. Power structures are bred into us. We learn to work them very early and everyone is implicated. Even little kids," Kelly says.
The writer says he did have some reservations about writing about this particular part of his childhood.
"I'm aware of the complexities of other people's stories, especially Indigenous stories. It haunted me throughout the whole process of writing," Kelly says.
"And that's ongoing for me, it will never be resolved. I still believe that it's not for me to say 'he's my brother'. It's for them to bless me with it."
Despite the heavy content within the novel, the tone is surprisingly sharp and witty. Kelly's voice remains light and enticing throughout. It is undoubtedly Kelly's greatest triumph as a writer.
"It's not what's happened to you that matters, it's what you do with it. You could feel all the crap in the world, but those are your ingredients and it's what you do with them that matters," he says.