Author Bio

Judith Margaret Evans Deverell, born and raised in Cardiff, South Wales, United Kingdom, 7. February, 1953, began story writing when she learned to hold a pencil, but with too many stories under the bed and with not much more than title pages, she began to write them in her head, instead.

After a TB vaccination at six years of age she was hospitalized for many months with an unusual form of TB significantly damaging the cartilage in both hip joints; suffering years of pain until miraculously healed at the age of 29. Her long hospitalization period altered her, once, sunny extrovert nature to quiet introversion. Spending most of her childhood, further alone and isolated on the top deck of the No: 24 bus from Whitchurch to Llandaff, travelling to and fro to school her life became increasingly cocooned in her imagination.

Private school education, (primary & secondary,) further isolating, and a tragic waste of time with undiagnosed dyslexia was a trial to be endured. School essays, though ‘9-out-of-10’ for content were a mass of red ink. ‘The right letters were inside the right words,’ she says, ‘but rarely in the right order and some quite back-to-front.’ Nevertheless, she became a bookworm and taught herself and by middle age could spell almost anything.

Secondary school was followed by a two year Ordinary National Diploma course in Hotel and Catering Operations, endured at a Cardiff technical college. Her mother, despairing of her daughter’s ability to cope in the world decided that this course would be a good option as it taught cooking and useful housekeeping skills. Failing to find a job afterwards, her father then considered a one year course at The London College of Secretaries would be helpful. This was a further trial, but which fit her for escape in being able to touch type; although, it didn’t fit her for a job.

After several disastrous interviews, a solicitor friend of her father’s did take her on. Shortly firing her, though, for incorrectly ‘booting in’ his (garage-sized) computer and accidently blowing it up. Unemployable, her father had her work in his accountancy practice, at his Pontypridd office; but finding her sadly incapable she was sent home to look after her mother.

After her mother’s mental illness and suicide when she was twenty years old she ran away to sea and lived on small sailing boats on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for five years.

Shipwrecked off the Sahara Desert coast of West Africa on the 9th of October, 1974, she found herself homeless and lived under a bougainvillea hedge in a boatyard while building a new boat on the beach in front of it. Sailing in February 1976 across the Atlantic Ocean from Dakar, West Africa to Cayenne, South America with her newborn son in her 34ft. junk-rigged, beach-built sailing boat. After a dramatic 17 day voyage, and then being nearly shipwrecked off the mouth of the Oronoco River in French Guyana, she cruised the Caribbean Islands and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in Florida, USA in February 1977; followed by another baby who did not make it into this world, but one who inspired and generated her new novel:  . .

‘SKETCHBOOK OF SOLITUDE: LISTENING ART.’

Immigrating to New Zealand in 1979 with her two small children she lived on Gt. Barrier Island (54 nautical miles northeast of Auckland) where she was found of her Beloved, her heart’s desire, and her life transformed.

In 1981, intensely in love with God she was hospitalized with schizophrenia in Invercargill, Southland, for a week. A further and longer hospitalization period followed in Kaeo, Northland, in 1987.

On 16 September, 1989, married Neil Deverell; subsequent births of twins and two more children: raising six; four of whom she fully homeschooled in between two further hospitalizations for schizophrenia in 2006 and 2007.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2020, and facing the fear, working now through yet another challenge to her health, she allowed intuition and her daughter’s research on breast cancer to guide her and chose a healthy alternative to the toxic mainstream medical regime after her surgery. Today, she is very much alive and fit, and healthier than ever, using food as medicine: and is healed, and happy, enjoying life and health.                                                 

 (Click to access ‘a healthy alternative’ — and ‘DIVIDED ASUNDER’)

Regarding her schizophrenia and her nearly 15 years of continuous psychiatric drug ‘therapy:’ Judith began a supervised withdrawal (Aug 2020 to Feb 2021) in the midst of the cancer scare and is almost drug free with the intention of being fully so. ‘It’s not ‘mental illness’ that’s the problem,’ she says, ‘it’s the damage inflicted by ‘the remedy.’’ Judith has written a fascinating book documenting her illness — DIVIDED ASUNDER; The Saga of a Gifted Illness; Unlocking the Mystery of Schizophrenia — and this is one of the TWENTY MANUSCRIPTS showcased on this site.    

Residing on the shores of a beautiful wilderness harbour in the North Island of New Zealand, she lives with her husband, enjoying her family, and her container garden and wind chimes in the same pioneer, Edwardian villa where they raised and homeschooled four of their children; all regularly returning to the family home enjoying one another’s company. Writing is a way of life and an ongoing passion and more ‘writing in art’ projects are underway.

Please feel free to contact the author:  CONTACT JUDITH DEVERELL