Author Spotlight: Laura Davey
We are pleased to introduce Laura Davey, who recently published two children's books Robyn Robin (inspired by her own brain injury) and a re-telling of the story of Jonah from the perspective of the whale called Super Simon with us. Both titles are now available through the Word Alive Press Bookstore, Chapters/Indigo, Amazon, local Christian bookstores, and wherever else books are sold. We asked Laura to share a little bit about her writing and her new books. But first, a little bit about her.
About
Laura Davey grew up in London, Ontario in a family of five. There were her mom and dad, as well as her two older sisters. For Laura’s twelfth birthday, her sisters planned to take her on a road trip! But they never made it to their destination. The result was a car accident that left Laura with a traumatic brain injury.
When Laura was a child, her writing passion started by crafting diary entries, which involved her sitting down on her bed at night and chronicling in her little notebook what had happened that day. After her injury, those diary entries continued, because that was one of the things she had to do daily to help her memory in speech therapy. These entries were written on a computer, as using a writing utensil became difficult after sustaining damage to her dominant hand.
At first Laura hated these speech therapy journal entries. They were mandatory, and when she missed a day she would forget what had happened. Over time, though, this process fuelled her writing career, as she could type at a much quicker rate than she could write with a pen or pencil. It also increased her vocabulary as she was able to write more descriptively, such as what her meals consisted of.
When Laura went to college to study the theatre arts, she took a script-writing course. This was in the second year of the program, and she excelled. She wrote many skits, short stories, and plays suitable for the stage. The professor loved Laura’s writing, but she also said that she couldn’t “see” Laura in the writing. It took Laura six years for that comment to sink in.
That’s when she started writing her book, and after six years of work it was finally published in May 2022. She loved this opportunity to share her story with others.
In April 2023, she joined a virtual support group with Dale Brain Injury Services. As a person living with a brain injury, she didn’t have any friends who could relate to her experience. This gave her more opportunities to write, including a speech which she was invited to write and deliver at their 2025 gala. This was the nonprofit’s biggest fundraiser of the year. Laura enjoyed writing down all the ways in which the association had helped her.
Q&A
Q: What event in your life inspired you to write Robyn Robin? Why did you choose to share it with readers?
A: When I was twelve, I was a passenger in a car involved in a motor vehicle accident. I sustained a traumatic brain injury. After it happened, there were no books out there to help me through the recovery process. I never knew what to expect.
My first book was Hope on the Horizon, which tells the whole story of what happened to me, but it had no pictures. I wondered to myself, How can I reach children?
When I started this project, at first I was going to make the character an elephant, as they are known to have long memories that are very slow to forget. But I struggled to figure out how the elephant could have gotten injured. While contemplating that, in the spring of 2024, a fledgling robin flew right into my window. And I thought, That’s it!
Q: What do you most want readers to walk away with after reading Robyn Robin?
A: After a brain injury, you become a different person. You may not be able to do the same things you could before, but that’s okay! Not every brain injury is the same.
Q: You’ve published three books now. How do you keep finding inspiration?
A: Honestly, I live every day to the fullest. I write non-fiction, so I focus on personal experiences I’ve had in my life. I also draw inspiration from the Bible. I try to look at biblical stories from the eyes of a child and ask myself, What do they see in this story?
Q: What do you hope readers will learn from Super Simon?
A: You may be young, but God can still use you to fulfill a purpose. Listen for God’s still, small voice. Pray at all times, whether you’re in trouble, scared, or even when things are going well. Know that you are loved by God.
Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
A: Yes! If you’ve been bitten by the writing bug, like me, you’ll always have the drive in you to write. So keep writing, even if you think it’s garbage. Beauty is in the eye of the reader, not the author. We are our worst critic. It’s easy to read something we’ve written and judge it right away.
Also, and I’m going to sound like a health nut here, or maybe like your mom, but seriously—make sure you get a full night’s rest before you write anything. Oftentimes I think that I sound like I’m making sense on the screen of my laptop, but then I proofread it after a full night’s sleep and find spelling errors, missed words, and grammatical errors. As writers, we think we get enough sleep. But we end up burning out if we don’t have good sleep habits.
Then there’s nutrition. If we don’t give the brain the proper vitamins and minerals it needs to perform daily tasks, like writing, we won’t be able to write well. The brain may perform sluggishly from not getting the nutrition it needs to perform at its best.
The next thing is, you guessed it, exercise. Writing comes best to me after I’ve had an active day. Here’s my reasoning: because exercising gets your heart pumping, your brain gets more oxygen. Exercise can range from a walk, a run, bicycling, or even house-cleaning! No matter the activity I get into, it sets my imagination wild and ideas come to me. I often feel so excited to get out my laptop and type up whatever has come to my mind.
Connecting Points
For more information and to order all of Laura's books, click here.