My name is Dyonne Antonette Josiah. I am from Islington, North London. I am the creator of “The Adventures of Canary Ryland”, which began over 10 years ago.
I started scribbling stories as a hobby when I was nine years old. When I was 16 years old, I discovered that I was dyslexic and realised that my struggle with reading and writing was more than me thinking that I was stupid; it was just that I had a different way of understanding things. Instead of letting dyslexia take over my life, I decided to pursue writing as a career.
I wrote stories as a way of releasing all the madness that was going on in my head. By the age of 24, I felt a passion to write children’s stories and started to take my work seriously after receiving praise from my family and friends.
In 2010, whilst at work, I was doodling on a piece of paper and created a character called “Maria”, who knew where babies came from and wanted to tell the world. After a while, I didn’t connect with the name Maria, so I changed the name from Maria to Canary. Thus, Canary Ryland was born.
The idea for the book, “The Adventures of Canary Ryland—How do you get a baby?” came to me when I was standing in the children’s section of a local bookstore one day and found that there were no humour books around the subject of babies. I wanted to write a story that could ease children and parents and give them the confidence to talk about the subject of babies without feeling embarrassed.
Since its conception my book is currently stocked in 2 bookshop, I have sold over 300 copies and I have recently won The Golden Wizard Book Prize.
I have written another 29 books in total under the adventures of Canary Ryland umbrella and I plan to have the second book released soon.
Out side The Adventures of Canary Ryland I have written 2 more children's book series and a YA series.
Thank you for joining me on my adventure!
