I was born and grew up in Liverpool, UK in the 1960/1970s, and have lived in London since the early 1980s where I have been writing professionally for over thirty years.
My 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 revealing the origins of the play, including interviews with actors, directors, designers involved in productions over the years, is published by Nick Hern Books.
Other plays also published by NHB - see PLAYS & BOOKS
WALTZ WITH ME was published by Renard Press, 2023.
AS LONG AS WE ARE BREATHING published by Lemon Soul, 2025.
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Other work includes THE TRUE-LIFE FICTION OF MATA HARI, Palace Theatre, Watford, 2002; 3 SISTERS ON HOPE STREET (with Tracy-Ann Oberman) at Liverpool Everyman and Hampstead Theatre, London, 2008; THE A-Z OF MRS P, with composer Gwyneth Herbert, Southwark Playhouse, 2014; POPPY + GEORGE, Palace Theatre, Watford, 2016; THIS IS ME, snapshots of girlhood, memoir as interactive monologue, Chickenshed, 2018. Plays for BBC radio, include SWINE, DOCTOR Y, HEN PARTY, PSYCHE, and Woman’s Hour serial, TIGER WINGS. In 2005, I was Pearson Creative Research Fellow at the British Library. I have been involved in two Wellcome Trust award-winning projects: 2001/2003, Science on Stage and Screen, exploring pain with medical specialists, PUSH at The People Show Studios, London; and 2016/2018, with composer Gwyneth Herbert, THE RHYTHM METHOD musical love story (with contraception) at Bush Theatre Fertility Fest, 2018. In 2019 I mounted concerts at St James’s, Paddington of new opera SONG OF DINA, with composer Maurice Chernick, giving voice to Dina, silenced sister of the Bible’s Joseph of multi-coloured coat fame.
I worked in 2021/22 with a team of glaciologists and environmental scientists at University of Plymouth and in Peru on GLACIER GIFTS, a collection of imaginative writings celebrating the magnificence of glaciers and mourning their retreat due to climate change.
​In early 2025 my new play, AS LONG AS WE ARE BREATHING - meditations on survival and beyond, directed by Ben Caplan, premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London.
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At the heart of my work and practice is a playful and open-hearted approach to challenging, thought-provoking themes, championing the invisibled or silenced, particularly women's experience, probing connections between the personal and collective psyche, the epic in the intimate, and the healing alchemy of art.
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Alongside writing and making theatre, I trained in my twenties to teach drama at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. After a stint full time in inner London secondary schools, I have continued throughout to teach and encourage authentic creative expression for all ages. I facilitated residential courses at Cortijo Romero personal development centre in southern Spain from 2012 until it closed in 2023 and since 2022 have been running a retreat annually in St Ives, Cornwall. I also run a weekly Writers Group online which has been described as 'yoga for writers'.
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