Danielle Dutton is a writer, editor, and book designer. She is the author of two novels: Margaret the First and SPRAWL; two prose collections: Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other and Attempts at a Life; and an illustrated nonfiction chapbook on fiction/visual art called A Picture Held Us Captive. Recent work appears in the anthology Double Feature.

Dutton’s fiction and/or criticism has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, BOMB Magazine, n+1, The White Review, Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, NOON, etc. She has written the introduction to books by Renee Gladman, Ann Quin, and Allison Carter, and has collaborated on books with visual artists Richard Kraft, Magali Reus, and Courtney Stephens. She has been interviewed for or profiled by the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Nylon, Publishers Weekly, Paris Review Daily, the “Between the Covers” podcast by David Naimon, etc.

Dutton has worked in publishing for nearly two decades. She was the production manager and then book designer at the nonprofit publisher Dalkey Archive Press from 2007 to 2011. In 2009, she co-founded the award-winning independent press Dorothy, a publishing project. The press was named for her great aunt Dorothy, a librarian, rose gardener, animal lover, and children’s book author who drove a station wagon through the backroads of Southern California, delivering books to rural desert communities. Over the years, Dorothy has published books by established innovative writers including Renee Gladman, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Leonora Carrington, and it launched the publishing careers of writers including Nell Zink, Jen George, and Giada Scodellaro. In addition to editorial work, Dutton does the cover and text design and composition for all of Dorothy’s books. In 2020, Dutton and partner Martin Riker won the Golden Colophon Award for Paradigm Independent Publishing from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. The press’s titles have been listed for or won The National Book Award, The Shirley Jackson Award, The Goldsmiths Prize, The Republic of Consciousness Prize, and others.

Dutton has taught literature and writing courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, the University of Denver, Image Text Ithaca, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Image: Photograph discovered in receding floodwater. Danielle Dutton, North Carolina, 2002, taken by Martin Riker.

Agent: Harriet Moore at Aitken Alexander Associates