[2][4] Her first name was chosen by her mother due to it being the Spanish word for "female"; however, her father referred to her as Polly, which led to her legally changing her name in 2015.

[5] According to Williams, her earliest memories included "rubbing her eyes furiously to lose herself in 'bright spots of fluffy color', which she found a soothing refuge against the 'intrusive gabble' of the human world around her".

[2][7][8] In 1965, at the age of two, Williams was assessed as a psychotic infant; subsequently, throughout her childhood, she was tested multiple times for deafness and labelled as "disturbed".

[9] By the age of nine, she had developed two alternate personalities: "Willie", her "rebellious, disruptive, and bad-mannered side" and "Carol", the "kind, polite, socially acceptable child".

[2] From 1982, Williams started studying at La Trobe University and eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma of Education in 1990.

[8] In July 1996, doubts about Williams' condition were aired on Radio National's The Health Report and by The Australian newspaper.

[13][14] In February 2005, David Smukler, writing in the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities' journal Mental Retardation, noted that back in the mid-1990s some sceptics had a poorly defined understanding of the autism spectrum: "...autistic people such as Donna Williams and Temple Grandin started to publish first-person accounts that described their lives as autistic people living in an often-inhospitable nonautistic world.

[20] In 2002, she joined the United Kingdom's Medical Research Council's review into the causes of autism, where she was appointed to the lay-person's panel.

[21] In 1992, Williams published her first book, an autobiographical account titled Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic Girl (Doubleday, London).

[25] While Daniel Goleman of The New York Times described how Williams "originally wrote it as a series of notes to herself, to help her make sense of her own chaotic world.

[17] Kirkus Review found Williams had become "more emotionally vulnerable than ever, unprotected by the ritualistic noises and movements typical of autism and determined not to call on the false selves that helped her function in the world 'out there'".

[29] Emily Golson in Williams' entry in Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography (2005) finds that "[her] writing mirrors the convolutions of her thought processes: disjointed, sometimes rambling, often filled with images that convey a jumble of colors, sounds and attitudes".

Beth Fouse and Maria Wheeler describe Williams' interview and her mode of communication in their book, A Treasure Chest of Behavioral Strategies for Individuals with Autism (1997).

[38] On Jam Jar (1995), by Fresh Film in association with BBC Four, which aired in the UK, Williams provided her audience with a greater depth of understanding of autism.

Krankheit als Schicksal (English: Illness as fate), was filmed in 1995, by Hamburg's Spiegel TV, and was aired on 25 January 1997 in Germany.

In September 2010, Orlai Produkciós Iroda of Hungary produced a monodrama, Nemsenkilény, monológ nemmindegyembereknek ("Not a nobody creature") presented by Börcsök Enikő, from a book by autistic author, Henriett Seth F. which appeared in theatres and on TV.

The script contains quotations from Nobody Nowhere along with Birger Sellin's Don't want to Be Inside Me Anymore, and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.