Editor’s Pick: Donna Levin on the Web

The engaging and energetic CPB author Donna Levin has been especially busy the past couple of months, appearing all over the internet (and in bookstores, including Book Passage in San Francisco, pictured above). In Female First, she lists eight things she’d like her readers to know about her (“Half the Starbucks baristas in San Francisco,” she writes, “have memorized my daily espresso drink), including the very personal reason she now writes novels featuring characters on the autism spectrum: her own son is on the spectrum. In Lit Hub, she writes about the day she first learned his diagnosis, and the road she traveled balancing her calling as a novelist with her life as the mom of an autistic child, which she also discusses, movingly, on the podcast Different Brains. “The advantage of working at home is that you’re there when your kids need you,” she writes, in Working Mother. “The disadvantage of working at home is that you’re there when your kids want you.” It’s difficult, of course, for anyone to knock out that next page. In GirlTalkHQ, Donna reveals her secret for beating writer’s block: a community of female writers. “Before I met them,” she says, “I did not believe such women existed, and learning that they do is as valuable as anything else they gave me.” Finally, Donna talks about the supportive autism community, and her new book, in an interview right here in Audere Magazine. “It is a community,” she tells us. “And when I speak of the autism community, I mean not only those on the spectrum, but their families, friends, and all those who are committed to creating full lives for everyone.”

More to come.

Donna Levin is the author of four novels, all of which are available from Chickadee Prince Books. Her latest novel, He Could Be Another Bill Gates, was published this month; it’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at the bookstore right across the street from your home. Please take a look.