Journey With Julian
The signature keynote: diagnosis, denial, marriage under strain, and the day a father stopped grieving the child he imagined and met the one he had.
The Book, Advocacy & Speaking
Journey With Julian
Dwayne spent a career asking other people about the hardest days of their lives. Then he had his own. His son Julian's autism diagnosis became the book he wrote, the story he tells most — and the one audiences never forget.
The most personal story is often the one that tells us where we're going.
On the Katie Couric Show discussing Journey With Julian
The Book
The memoir at the heart of it all.
Written the way he reports: specific, unflinching, and refusing the easy ending.
Journey With Julian follows a family from diagnosis through the years that reshaped everything around it — the appointments, the isolation, the well-meaning advice, the fights worth having, and the ordinary mornings that turned out to be the point.
Published April 2, 2013 by Strebor Books (Simon & Schuster), 208 pages. It is the backbone of Dwayne's most requested keynote and the work UNC cites as the origin of its Autism Fathers Conference.
For organizations
Bulk orders with signed copies, keynote-plus-book packages, and reading guides for employee resource groups and parent networks.
For readers
Available in paperback and ebook. Order a copy directly from Amazon.
The Written Voice
The author beyond the book.
“What My Son's Autism Taught Me About Love, Joy, and Loss” — Dwayne's Father's Day essay for The Assembly, the North Carolina magazine of long-form reporting and commentary.
The piece moves from a Disney theater aisle to the morning his wife Martina set a satchel of autism reading in his lap, to the walkway where a stranger crossed to avoid his son and left laughing minutes later. It is the clearest sample of how he writes: plain, exact, unsentimental about his own early failures as a father.
For programmers, editors and event teams, it is also the fastest way to hear the voice before booking it.
Read the essay in The AssemblyPublished by The Assembly (theassemblync.com), written by Dwayne Ballen. Linked to its original source; excerpts appear here for attribution only.
“If he has just a few minutes with you, you usually walk away with a smile on your face.”
Inside the Book
Five chapters that audiences quote back.
- 01
The Word
The appointment, the term nobody prepares you for, and the drive home.
- 02
Two Parents, Two Griefs
How a marriage survives processing the same news differently.
- 03
The Table
Schools, systems, and learning to advocate without becoming the angry parent.
- 04
Julian's Terms
The moment the goal stopped being normal and started being his.
- 05
What I'd Tell You
The letter to the father sitting where he sat.
Praise & Coverage
What the record shows.
“An award-winning broadcast journalist shares his poignant story about his family's journey with autism… Journey with Julian shows that in the end, it's family and fierce determination that help us all to get the most out of life.”
“Dwayne Ballen talks about the challenges and gifts of raising a special needs child… showing how those challenges can make a family stronger.”
The UNC Autism Fathers Conference is described by the university as “an outgrowth of one father's journey” — Ballen's, as told in the memoir.
Quotations are reproduced from publicly available publisher and press sources and are attributed to them.
The Keynote
From the page to the stage.
This is not a motivational talk with a diagnosis attached. It is a reported, unsentimental account of what a family learns when the plan disappears.
Dwayne speaks about the diagnosis day and the years after it: the marriage that had to be renegotiated, the school meetings, the stares in public, the small victories that no one outside the house understands, and the grown love that replaced the expectations he had to bury.
Audiences respond because it is delivered by a broadcaster — structured, paced, and free of self-pity — and because it ends somewhere useful. Every keynote closes with what the room can actually do differently.
What the room leaves with
- —Language that respects families instead of managing them
- —Practical advocacy tactics parents can use the next morning
- —A caregiver-support framework leaders can implement
- —Permission to talk honestly about fear, faith and fatigue
Keynotes
Four talks, tailored to the audience.
The Diagnosis Conversation
What families actually hear in that room — and how clinicians can deliver hard information without taking hope with them when they leave.
Building an Inclusive Workplace
Neurodiversity beyond the poster: hiring, accommodation, caregiver support, and the business case that survives a budget review.
Every Student's Second Chance
Advocacy from the parent's side of the IEP table, and what partnership looks like when both sides stop bracing for a fight.
Formats: 20-minute plenary, 45-minute keynote, 60-minute keynote with moderated Q&A, half-day workshop, or fireside conversation with a host from your organization. Virtual delivery available.
Institutional Work
The UNC Autism Fathers Conference.
UNC describes its Autism Fathers Conference as “an outgrowth of one father's journey — award-winning broadcaster Dwayne Ballen.”
The first UNC Autism Fathers Conference was held September 14, 2019 at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, built around the role of fathers in parenting individuals with autism and the issues they rarely name out loud. It grew directly out of Dwayne's own experience and his memoir, Journey With Julian, and was designed as the first in a continuing series tied to UNC's autism programs. It has continued in later years, including a virtual edition in 2022.
That is the distinction worth booking: a speaker whose personal story a major research university built a recurring program around, delivered with the discipline of three decades on live television.
- —First conference: September 14, 2019, the Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill
- —Convened with UNC's autism programs, including the UNC Autism Research Center, the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, and the UNC TEACCH Autism Program
- —Featured in WUNC's 2019 report “Autism Fathers Rise To The Occasion”
Sources: UNC Health Newsroom and the UNC Health Foundation event pages; WUNC (Sept. 2019).
“For me, it's been good to know that I wasn't the only father who has a child with autism. It's therapeutic to talk with other people who are going through their own journey.”
Book the keynote, the author, or both.
Keynotes, author appearances, book clubs, signings and festival panels — with bulk book pricing for schools, hospitals and nonprofits. Tell us the audience and we'll tailor the visit.