Danielle Wood grew up in southern lutruwita/Tasmania, influenced by a rich culture of storytelling and by the wild beauties of the island. Her dream, as a child, was to be an author.
Her first career was as a journalist. Then, following a brief episode as media officer for Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service, she completed a PhD in writing at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Her PhD novel was The Alphabet of Light and Dark, which won the Australian/Vogel's Literary Prize in 2002. She has taught creative writing at the University of Tasmania since 2003.
Danielle's fiction is fed by two streams – the island of her birth, and the magical versatility of the fairy tale. The Alphabet of Light and Dark, Housewife Superstar: the very best of Marjorie Bligh and two edited collections, Deep South: stories from Tasmania and Island Story: Tasmania in Object and Text, engage with Tasmania's unique history, environment and culture. The collections Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls and Mothers Grimm provide contemporary fairy tale reinventions that focus on the experiences of women.
A versatile wordsmith, Danielle writes fiction, non-fiction, essays and prose poetry, and has a growing stable of noms-de-plume, under which she also writes children's fiction and romantic comedies.
'Wood's poetic prose evokes the places where her characters voyage, so powerfully you can smell them.'
Living and working in lutruwita (Tasmania), Danielle acknowledges with deep respect the traditional owners of this land, the palawa people.
