Christian Austin
RESILIENT — childhood adversity to Cambridge University. Out now!
Author Bio
Featured Interview: Christian Austin discusses the story behind his memoir RESILIENT in Tbilisi, Georgia.
I had the good fortune of spending ten years in prison. Not all at once - I chose to do it in instalments between the ages of 15 and 35. For a long time, I was a recidivist. Those years behind bars ran alongside my experiments with substances, not all of them destructive - but most of the people I shared those inquiries with never made it out of their twenties.
Some things seen and lived cannot be unseen. Those experiences shaped me. They broke me open, forced me to think differently, and - paradoxically - gave me the foundation for who I am today. I feel blessed to have survived long enough to share my story, in the hope that it may inspire and motivate others still navigating their own storms.
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I cannot imagine who or where I’d be if my life had followed a more traditional course. Instead, I am a musician, a traveller, a reader, a writer, a criminologist, a public speaker—and above all, a survivor.
During my prison years I read more books than many encounter in a lifetime. It was both a lifeline and a passion. In solitary confinement I read the entire King James Bible in 28 days, followed by Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Hugo’s Les Misérables, Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and Charrière’s Papillon spoke to me for obvious reasons. Reading was how I learned, and it eventually opened the gates to Cambridge University, where I completed a Master’s in Criminology at the Institute of Criminology.
My heroes range from Ernest Shackleton and Napoleon Bonaparte and I'm deeply inspired by the passion of Dr. Gabor Maté, Cendie Stanford, and Patti Ashley whose work on trauma and addiction resonates deeply with my own path.
After graduating, I gave a TEDx talk in Cambridge and was invited to give another in 2020—before the pandemic closed the world. Today, I continue to share my journey in the hope that others will see that no matter where you begin, it’s never too late to rewrite your story.
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