Eckermann has written poetry collections, verse novels and a memoir, and has been shortlisted for or won several literary awards.
[4] She grew up in a loving supportive home, but she was assaulted sexually by a family friend when she seven years old, and experienced ongoing abuse and racism while growing up.
[1] After turning 18, Eckermann began searching for her birth mother, Audrey, but didn't find her until she was 34, after information had been released with the Bringing Them Home report in 1997.
[6] Aboriginal writers that she met through festivals and workshops were her early inspirations, authors and poets such as Boori Pryor, Lionel Fogarty, Bill Neidje, Eva Johnson, Terry Whitebeach, Kim Scott, Romaine Morton and Alexis Wright.
Her third book, and second verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, won a State Library of Queensland black&write!
Eckermann founded Australia's first Aboriginal Writers Retreat in Koolunga, in a 130-year-old general store which she restored.
[9] Her memoir Too Afraid to Cry won the inaugural Tangkanungku Pintyanthi Fellowship at the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature in 2016.
It explores, writes Sarah Holland-Batt, "broader ideas about colonialism’s hierarchies and power structures, and its lingering historical impact on the first peoples of this country, on language, and on the very landscape itself.