Donna Williams – March 27 2016

World Autism Awareness Day – April 2 2016

Donna, also known by her married name, Donna Leanne Samuel, is a writer, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter, sculptor, public speaker, qualified teacher and autism consultant. She holds an honours degree in Sociology and a degree in Linguistics. Donna was assessed at two years of age as ‘psychotic’, labelled ‘disturbed’ in her teens and diagnosed as autistic in her twenties. Throughout her childhood she was tested multiple times for deafness. Donna has written four autobiographies, Nobody Nowhere (which she has also written as a screenplay), Somebody Somewhere, Like Colour to the Blind and Everyday Heaven. She has released two solo music albums, Nobody Nowhere and Mutations, and has been the subject of several TV documentaries. She has written textbooks on the autism spectrum and her other poetry books include Baloombawop for children, Tricks of Light, Weirdos Like Me, Not Just Anything and Tree of Life.

The Gadoodleborger
e-Book pdf available at www.donnawilliams.net
Children’s / Teenage

This rhyming love story is about someone from the ‘usual world’ meeting a mysterious other worldly creature whom he takes back to his world only to find she cannot cope. Empathic enough to understand the creature in her own right and the necessity to value her own world, her own ‘normality’, he determines to return her to her own world. But she, in turn, brings to his awareness that he too is different, quite unlike most in the world he is from, and that he is a translator between worlds, a bridgekeeper, and instead they build a shared world, a place of ‘Simply Being’ where both can be comfortably what they truly are.

Chemo Love
Available as e-Book or in hardback from www.donnawilliams.net

Chemo Love is a 29 page collection of poetry, photography and art as an illustrated story of the journey Donna made with her husband Chris in dealing with her breast cancer in 2011. From discovery to diagnosis, from mastectomy to chemo, it captures the transitions in identity, the impact on mortality and the endurance of spirit, of womanhood, and of love.