Danielle de Valera

I’m best known in Australia for my short stories, which have appeared in such diverse publications as Penthouse, Aurealis, dotlit and the Australian Women’s Weekly. I started writing poetry at thirteen (I was a moony child), and got my first taste of publication (albeit self-) when I and three other Year 11students founded a high school magazine called By the Way, where I had a full page, 2-column spread of school gossip, which I wrote in the manner of the Hollywood columnists of the day, Hopper Hopper and Louella Parsons, complete with my own byline. It was heady stuff in those days for a 16-year-old.

MagnifiCat and Dropping Out, my first ventures into indie publishing, are the result of my ongoing love affair with the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia, where I lived from 1977 to 2018.

A more complete bio can be found on Amazon’s Author Central, and below is my literary CV (boring, but even the humblest takes years to acquire).

LITERARY CV [Awards are in Bold. Publications are in Bold Italics.]

Dropping Out: a tree change novel-in-stories was published in 2016 and short-listed for the Woolahra Digital Literary Award, 2017.

‘The applicant’ (short story) was published in fleshy husks and brittle bones, Visible Ink 24, [Melb., RMIT, 2012].

Brisbane ’60s novel, currently untitled, under the title Some Kind of Romantic, was short-listed for the Impress Prize (Exeter University, UK) September 2012.

Brisbane ’60s novel, currently untitled, under the title A Few Brief Seasons (fiction ms: 108K) was short-listed for the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival/Varuna Litlink Unpublished MS Award, April 2011.

“Busting God’ (short story) was published in Blue Crow, Vol. 1, Issue 2, October 2010.

‘Handsome is (as Handsome Does)’ (short story) was published in Contemporary Fables, Volume 1, March 2010 [Gilgamesh Connections, Melbourne], and later performed on BayFM’s Pageturners’ program by Cristo Brett 16 December 2011.

‘No Through Road’ (short story) was published in the Cutwater Literary Anthology, July 2009. (Previously short-listed for the 2004 Glen Eira My Brother Jack short story award, the 2006 Hal Porter short story award and for Scribe Publication’s Australian Short Stories 2, 2011.)

‘Stella by Starlight’ (short story) was published in the Christmas edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 2008.

‘On the Rocks’ (short story) was published in the The Barbeque, anthology of poems and short stories published by Lismore City Council in 2004.

‘The Dealer’ (short story) was published in Body of Work 2, an anthology of short stories compiled by the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre, [Byron Bay, NRWC, 2004].

‘Pilgrimage’ (short story) was published in dotlit (formerly Imago): the Online Journal of Creative Writing, Vol. 4, Issue 1, August 2003.

‘A Pink Rosebush and a Piece of Lattice’ (short story) won the Ed Gaskell Award in 2002 and appeared in Age Matters, an anthology of short stories and poetry published by Lismore City Council in 2002.

Found: One Lover (fiction ms: 55K) won the Emma Darcy Award for Romance Manuscript of the Year 2000. Cowritten with Louise Forster under the pseudonym Sylvia Ashley this MS (considered too literary for the genre), is still seeking a publisher.

‘Roses’ (short story) was published in Aurealis, Issue No. 24 (Subscriber-Only, Bonus Fiction Issue), Chimaera Publications, September 1999.

‘The State of Grace’ (short story) won the 1998 Nicholas Shand-Beach Hotel short story competition and was published in the Byron Shire Echo 22 September 1998.

‘The Sunflowers’ (short story) won the Inaugural Annual Wellspring Women Writers’ competition in 1998 and was published in Wellspring, Vol. 2, Issue 9, Jan/Feb 1999, and later in the anthology From the Circle of Women, Volume 1, [Lismore, Shelley Jackson], 1999.

‘A Happily Married Man’ (short story) won the Inaugural Nicholas Shand-Beach Hotel short story competition in 1997, was published in the Byron Shire Echo 9 September 1997, and performed by Cristo Brett on BayFM radio in Pip Morrissey’s Pageturners program on 18 November 2011.

‘Remains to be Seen’ (short story) won the Ulitarra-Sheaffer Pen short story competition in 1993 (judge: Michael Wilding) and was published in Ulitarra No. 4, December 1993.

‘Transference’ (short story) was published in Australasian Penthouse, December 1990 in the good old days when Bob Guccione owned the magazine and Phil Abraham was editor.