My name is Danielle Curley. I write long-form literary fiction and memoir, personal essays, and all sorts of juicy copy. As a fancy-freelancer I have edited six YA novels now published through Bloomsbury UK and Simon and Schuster U.S. My personal essay ‘Go Back to Where You Swiped From’ was shortlisted for the 2020 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing…
And I have a lit fic novel hot off the keyboard looking for a good home.
I am based in Southeast QLD, but Melbourne is my second home. I have memberships with the ASA, Writer’s Victoria, the QLD Writer’s Center, and I have studied in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT.
“What Jane had done, was a heinous thought. It travelled with her. Like white noise it pervaded so intensely she could almost forget it was there. The coach window hummed by her headphones, the glass cold at her temple. She turned up the volume. She watched highway lines vanish like cocaine.
Through a dim reflection of her lips, the road was infinite. An illusion in which she let herself descend. Her world now was only the light of passing cars. Nothing needed of her.
She’d crossed the state border before dawn, maybe after. Either way, it was enough bitumen to convince herself she didn’t care if Dad had pried himself off the floor. He still hadn’t called, back at the pokes before he noticed her room was empty, she assumed. Or he was dead. The odds of both, she thought, were just as likely.
Jane plucked mindlessly at the leather strap holding the camera across her chest. The two passports in the front pocket of her overalls she thumbed every twenty minutes, just in case. Australia. America. No-one could take these from her. And to have nothing else, brought a strange sort of comfort.
Hills along the highway drifted by. She did not look back. But she wondered, as she had for the last thousand kilometres, if his love could even be outrun.
Perhaps it would always be in her. The wiring coiled around her DNA.”
Excerpt | The Spider and the Light | 2024
The Spider and the Light
A completed literary fiction novel | 95,000 words
Running from a difficult upbringing, Jane leaves a troubled father in Melbourne for the possibility of an unencumbered life. Passing through a small coastal town on her way to America, she meets Finn, a struggling musician clinging to family acreage long after his parents have gone. Unable to leave or stay, Jane flips a coin, leaving the decision to fate. She sacrifices a life on the road, but her love is an unsustainable fix for Finn’s long-held grief.
Though the end of them is just the beginning.
The Spider and the Light is an Australian fairy tale for the age of the housing crisis. A story of paradoxes—fire and ice, madness and genius, love and toxic masculinity.
Self Preservation
Long-form memoir | First draft
What if a narrative arc is just a teetering at the top of the hill?
Navigating mental illness and the first world poverty it brings, this is the story of my father, my mother, my siblings and I, and how we broke the family curse.
Woven into the narrative is an exploration of generational trauma, the concept of multiple lives, and the value of escape versus truth when it comes to human storytelling.
Pieced together as memory and moments, this story is everything I have. This book is messy. But so is life, isn’t it?
Go Back to Where You Swiped From
Personal Essay | 1200 words
‘Go Back to Where You Swiped From’ is a satirical essay that uncovers the nature of prejudice through the humorous lens of online dating.
Shortlisted | 2020 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing
My fiction work is insightful and filmic, with strong voice and character.
My non-fiction writing aims to explore the difficult aspects of life with depth and humour.
.All writing copyright of Danielle Curley 2024