Emma Williams
After finishing a degree in Modern History at Oxford, Emma Williams had a brief spell in marketing and start-ups, a little publishing, and a stint in market research. Then she went back to high school to sit science A levels in order to study medicine in London.
Heading for a career in obstetrics she was blown off course, slightly, by teaming up with a partner whose work was abroad. She adapted, working as an itinerant doctor in public health research in New York, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Africa, Senegal and Jerusalem.
Amongst other things she studied the transmission of HIV in women, the availability of condoms in high risk areas, and the impact of military occupation on childbirth and labour outcomes.
A bigger storm hit when her fourth child, born in Bethlehem, reached the age of two. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Everything was thrown up in the air, but instinct persuaded her to put all her energies into giving the children the best start in life that she could muster.
When the youngest reached the age of 21 she was surprised to find herself still here, still reasonably active, and ready to come out of hiding. She is currently living in Berlin, working on a novel about a plastic surgeon and a child who encounter one another during World War II. She is also writing a memoir of living with a chronic degenerative disease, and how this came to have unexpected positives in the light of her father’s diagnosis and extreme reaction to it. She has written for a number of publications including the Independent, the Spectator, the Christian Science Monitor and the Lancet, and is the author of IT’S EASIER TO REACH HEAVEN THAN THE END OF THE STREET (Bloomsbury 2006), and THE STORY OF HURRY (Triangle Square; Illustrated edition, 2014).