Danielle Woerner

Welcome! I'm a writer who's active in many areas of the arts.

"I Never Promised You a Cherry Orchard" is my first published collection of poetry. I wrote the poems, took the photographs and designed the book, relishing all these phases of its creation. My haiku and senryu have appeared in Chronogram magazine; the "Three Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers" (Resolute Bear, 2017); and the Asian-poetry journal Eastern Structures (also on Amazon). I joined the Hudson Valley Haiku-kai in 2013. I'm a nature lover, so writing haiku comes naturally in that sense.

As a journalist, I've written features and op-ed pieces for Classical Singer, New Music Connoisseur, Hudson Valley Magazine and Newsweek. While living in the mid-Hudson region I wrote for the Woodstock Times, and my reporting for weekly Maine newspapers was recognized in 2018 by the National Federation of Press Women. I'm currently editing the new/forthcoming editions of T.A. McLaughlin's marvelous sci-fantasy series "The Love of the Tayamni."

Music: I'm a BMI-affiliated songwriter, and my professional classical/operatic singing career began in NYC. I'm the principal artist and executive producer of two acclaimed CDs of 20th-century American art song and chamber music, on the Albany and Parnassus labels. In Milbridge, Maine, my husband and I founded the Sunrise County Arts Institute in 2014. Until the pandemic hit, I taught voice lessons, ran a youth chorale and coached a local HS drama club, in which we workshopped and performed original shows with music. We also hosted residencies and a LitFest. In 2020-21 I moved the music/drama work online, including a new initiative, "Sing into Joy: Singing as Your Path to Wellness."

Visual arts: While designing "I Never Promised You a Cherry Orchard," I started making photo-haiga (haiku+image+calligraphy), which has led to a line of "Haiga Greetings" art cards.

I earned my B.A. in Music at Bard College, having also attended Barnard and Hunter (CUNY). I had wonderful experiences earning a Master's Certificate in Songwriting from Berklee College's Berkleemusic division, and earlier, studying French language and literature in Provence at the Université d'Aix-Marseille.

NEW LITERARY PROJECTS in the works:

- a family memoir/novel with its starting point during the Pandemic of 2018 in Philadelphia (cross my heart, I wrote the entire first draft ten years ago as a NaNoWriMo project), and

- a novel that follows its characters through multiple lifetimes, timelines and locations.

- probably sooner: an illustrated slam poem based on a fairy tale.

Stay tuned! and thanks for visiting.