Sara Gibbs

During the first thirty years of her life, comedy script writer Sara Gibbs had been labelled a lot of things - a crybaby, a scaredy cat, a spoiled brat, a weirdo, a show off - but more than anything else, she'd been called a Drama Queen. No one understood her behaviour, her meltdowns or her intense emotions. She felt like everyone else knew a social secret that she hadn't been let in on; as if life was a party she hadn't been invited to. Why was everything so damn hard?

Little did Sara know that, at the age of thirty, she would be given one more label that would change her life's trajectory forever. That one day, sitting in a doctor's office, she would learn that she has never been a drama queen, or a weirdo, but she has always been autistic.

In this hilarious, compelling and shocking memoir, Sara looks back through her childhood, her teenage years into adulthood and considers the embarrassing, heartbreaking and hilarious moments that make complete sense now she knows she is, in fact, not quite like everyone else, after all. Drama Queen is both a tour inside one autistic brain and a declaration that a diagnosis on the spectrum is no barrier to life full of love, laughter and success. It is the story of one woman trying to fit into a world that rejects her and, most importantly, it's about a life of labels, and the joy of ripping them off one by one.

First published: Thursday 13th May 2021