About the Author

Donna grew up in Perth, Western Australia and is a survivor of ritual abuse. She has an impressive laundry list of symptoms, after years of battling with the psychological, physical, mental, and emotional effects from her trauma. It led her to a ten-year recovery journey where she found sobriety and God through spiritual and emotional healing. She is now a publicly declared child sexual abuse survivor, along with being a boxer, academic and multi-disciplinary producer. Her production background spans a variety of formats, including television, feature films, documentary and online content. Her film work has been screened nationally and internationally in film festivals in USA, Europe and Australia.Her recent feature film Disclosure (2020) had its world premiere at the 31st Palm Springs International Film Festival and at Adelaide Film Festival (2020). The film is released in the USA by Breaking Glass Pictures and in Australia and New Zealand by Bonsai Films. She is an alumnus of the University of Melbourne and now an academic there, working in the Film and Television department. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Master of Producing program and has just submitted her PhD. Donna is the founder of Left / Write // Hook, and her research interests nowfocus on the intersection of creative arts and sport on the mental health and wellbeing of survivors of child sexual abuse. Claire Gaskin's first full-length collection of poetry a bud was completed in the receipt of an Australia Council Literature Board grant for 2003. "A bud" was released by John Leonard Press in 2006 and shortlisted in the John Bray SA Festival Awards for Literature in 2008. Her subsequent poetry collections are Paperweight (2013), Eurydice Speaks (2021) and Ismene's Survivable Resistance (2021). Her first poem, 'Woman' was published in 1985 in Poetry Monash no. 18 and since that time she has had over 100 poems published in major literary journals and newspapers. Her poetry has been widely anthologized and critically reviewed. She is a long-term teacher of creative writing across the university and community sectors.

Reviews

By no choice of their own, survivors of childhood sexual abuse spend the entirety of their lives 'in the ring', fighting. Left / Write // Hook offers visceral insight into survivors' fierce, compelling and ultimately triumphant stories. -- Dr Joy Townsend, Learning ConsentDonna Lyon has the ability to get women to open up and reveal all, and in the process begin the journey to healing. Boxing is a violent sport, but projects like Left / Write // Hook take the violence out of it, so that it becomes therapeutic and gives you power. -- Tommy Hopkins, Fitlife Boxing Club, Melbourne AustraliaIn 25+ years of working with people who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, I have come to understand the need to assist people to physically move through, as well as speak about, the trauma in order to lessen the hold that the impacts that the abuse can have on one's life - Left / Write // Hook does both with powerful effectiveness. -- Maria Vucko, (BA BSW MSW AMHSW)