Danika Dinsmore grew up in Northern California. She graduated with a degree in English and a teaching credential from California Lutheran University and with an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado (The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics). With poet Bernadette Mayer, she began an ongoing collaborative writing project called The 3:15 Experiment, portions of which were published by The Owl Press in 2000 and en theos press in 2006.
She moved to Seattle, Washington in 1995 and earned an Advanced Certificate in Screenwriting from the University of Washington. In 1996 she and poet Paul Nelson co-founded the Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB!) in Auburn, WA, which featured the state's first underage poetry slam and hosted such visiting poets as Anne Waldman, Andrew Schelling, E. Ethelbert Miller, Wanda Coleman, Eileen Myles, Joanne Kyger, Diane DiPrima and Michael McClure. From 2001-2003 she was Executive Director of Eleventh Hour Productions, the literary arts organization that produces the Seattle Poetry Festival, the Seattle Poetry Slam, and the Emerging Voice youth series. She became well-known in Seattle for her experimental and collaborative poetry, her spokenword performances, and her involvement in producing multi-disciplinary literary arts events. She performed numerous times with the 12-person SPLAB Spokenword Orchestra and the performance poetry quartet FourWord ForTete. In 1999 she won the Washington Poets Association Award for Performance Poetry.
In the early 2000s she turned her attention to screenwriting (or as she puts it - "got mellow and narrative"). She moved to Canada in 2003 where she began making short films and teaching creative writing courses at Capilano College, Vancouver Film School, Creating Writing for Children, and in the schools with Learning Through the Arts. In 2003 she won the Female Eye Film Festival's "Best Fresh Voice" Screenwriting Award for her feature script Limbs. In 2005, she accidentally became a novelist when she adapted one of her own feature screenplays into a book, because she couldn't find anyone else to do it for her. Turns out, she really likes writing novels.
She currently serves as the President of the Women in Film and Television Vancouver and is married to music maven Ken Ashdown.
from her red book
On the Day of the Great Miracle
She takes a cat's eye view of birds
standing on the beach like so many refuges
waiting for the great beast
or angel or other end of the world
The form of the deity in her head
full of priceless compassion
If they had hands
they would be sailors
It's already a miracle she thinks
That they can just be just wait
for the coming of the sea
Behind her the drift of road and vehicle
and the details of dreams
mornings of lemon pulp
afternoons of train conductors
evenings of kitchen drawers
Her liver and chest tight with the
poison of to-do
Today is Sunday and a new yellow stone
Yesterday a sliver of moon with hot and sour soup
A year ago this sun and sky and earth and birds
posed at the edge of the beach
with nothing on their minds
no words of regret on their beaks
from between sleeps
August 27, 2003
Vancouver, BC
Ext. Polly's Runaway Train
It's not a matter of lacking
direction
It's a matter of lacking purpose
Like that Stephen Brecht poem
When you speed up your
movements
She remembers a
bride and a groom
She remembers dust on
butterflies
She remembers a newspaper
article: Audrey Hepburn dies
All grace dies she thinks
all beauty fades
And what of those butterflies
pinned to foam and mounted
glassed in and hung
in the basement
so that every time she
does the fucking laundry
there they are
sad butterflies
One day in a madness
she opens them all
ties little strings to each and
dangles them from the basement
ceiling so at least on
her daily routine she can
have the illusion of life
does it really matter (if)
her joy
her secret secret joy
her runaway train
www.danikadinsmore.com
www.theaccidentalnovelist.blogspot.com
www.entheospress.com
www.315experiment.com
www.brubakerford.com