AustLit

Fiona Doyle, daughter of a Mbaiwum woman and a father of Austrian origin, was raised by her grandparents and grew up between the two communities of Napranum (Weipa South) and Aurukun, on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula. Fiona graduated from James Cook University in 2002 and the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) Dance College, Sydney, and has worked as a freelance performer and choreographer.

In 2002, she attended the first Indigenous Writers Forum in Brisbane, performing dramatic poetry and in October 2002 she toured Canada performing her poetry in the Honouring Words Indigenous Tour. She was commissioned by the Queensland Theatre Company to choreograph and act in The Orphanage Project by Angela Betzien.

Fiona has worked with her grandmother on the recording, documentation and preservation of traditional ways, language and sacred sites. Her grandmother, Jean George (Awumpun), is the subject of her biography Whispers of This Wik Woman (2004).

In 2007, at an event at UQ, she noted that

Writing about Country and living with families on Country has always been inspiration to carry and feed me throughout the creative process of whatever genre I'm creating in, be it dance, writing or theatre. I feel that my memories, the teachings of my people, in particular my Elders, and my own personal experience is the source of knowledge and guidance that I continue to draw from in order to yarn or project.

In 2012, she published Double Native, an autobiography of her upbringing on Cape York Peninsula and her pursuit, as a young woman, of a relationship with her father. She has also published fiction for children, as part of the Yarning Strong series.

In 2016, she was completing a PhD at James Cook University, involving, in part, trialling new counselling processes based on traditional ways of knowing, being, and doing.