Diane Samuels was born and grew up in Liverpool, UK in the 1960/1970s, and has lived in London since the early 1980s where she has been writing professionally for over thirty years.
Her play KINDERTRANSPORT was winner of the Verity Bargate and Meyer-Whitworth Awards in 1992/93 and has subsequently been produced all over the world, currently studied as an exam text. Diane Samuels' KINDERTRANSPORT, a book excavating the origins of the play, including interviews with different actors, directors, designers involved in productions over the years, is published by Nick Hern Books.
Other work includes plays for BBC Radio, musical theatre and a new opera, with composer Maurice Chernick, SONG OF DINA giving voice to the silenced and only sister of Joseph of 'technicolour dreamcoat' fame. Dina's Biblical story is, to say the least, challenging. Diane is in the early stages of writing SONG OF DINA as a missing book of the Bible in which Dina addresses the gaping holes in the Old Testament narrative giving a very different perspective.
At the heart of Diane's work is a playful and open-hearted approach no matter how challenging or thought-provoking a particular piece may be, championing the invisibled or silenced, bringing private experience tenderly into the public domain, probing connections between the personal and collective psyche, intimate stories revealing epic themes, and the healing alchemy of art.
Alongside writing and making theatre, Diane trained in her twenties to teach drama at Goldsmiths' college, University of London. After a stint full time in inner London secondary schools, she has continued throughout her adult life to teach and encourage authentic creative expression for all ages from five year olds to ninety five year olds, in formal and informal contexts, schools, universities. Diane continues to facilitate residential courses at Cortijo Romero personal development centre in southern Spain and runs a weekly Writers Group online which has been described as 'a creative workout'.
She is currently working with a team of glaciologists and environmental scientists at University of Plymouth and in Peru on GLACIER GIFTS, a collection of imaginative writings that celebrate the magnificence of glaciers and their retreat due to climate change. Also, completing 2 books: WRITING MAGIC, a scrapbook inspirational writing guide; and IN A WORD, thirty adventures in writing, each responding to a different, spontaneously given random word.