Danielle Henderson is a TV writer (Maniac, Long Story Short, and more), retired freelance writer, a former editor for Rookie, and an author.  A book based on her popular website, Feminist Ryan Gosling, was released by Running Press in August 2012; you can still buy it, and you probably should. Her memoir, The Ugly Cry, was published by Viking in June 2021, and was nominated for a Thurber Prize.

Danielle grew up in Warwick, New York, a town ensconced in beautiful fall foliage, rolling farms, festivals dedicated to fruit–and mild class warfare and explicit racism that was never openly discussed or acknowledged. She was absolutely shaped by these factors, as well her blessedly close proximity to Manhattan, the city where she came of age. Instead of doing drugs or drinking, Danielle taught herself how to read a bus schedule and skipped many days of school in an effort to mitigate her desire to live in a more temperate place with the reality that she would be stuck in Warwick for quite some time. As a result, she snuck into more concerts at Roseland and sat through more live tapings of The Late Show with Conan O'Brien than any earth science or chemistry classes, a retrospectively wise choice.

In the past 30 years she has parked her full, wild life in Alaska, California, New York City, Boston, England, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Seattle. She never had a plan, never had financial or familial support, and spent most of her teens and twenties working in restaurants, bakeries, and bookstores. She once drove from New York to Alaska by herself, has traversed the United States several times, and has survived a bear chase, four Alaskan winters, junior high school, working in a convent, Aquanet hairspray, acid wash jeans, and the entirety of the Mets' 1987 season. She is a confident solo traveler, and never checks a bag at the airport. Elle parle un peu de français, but mostly ordering food and the type of colloquial cursing you would use on the Metro, like hoping your dick falls off or a vulture eats your eyes.

She is very tall and often forgets that she has freckles; strangers take every opportunity to remind her of both.

Danielle believes in the motivating power of jerks, and updates her list of enemies annually on New Year's Day. She limits it to five people, and you are probably not on it.

Her hair looks like that on purpose. 

Danielle likes to make things with her bare hands, and she taught herself how to put up drywall for fun. She paints her own walls, takes out her own garbage, builds her own shelves, and is on a first-name basis with everyone at her local hardware store.

She co-hosted a film podcast on the Exactly Right Network for four years, and considers it a crowning achievement that she got thousands of people to watch Border.

Danielle is a triple Gemini (Sun, Moon, and Rising); while she doesn’t know entirely what that means, people who know about astrology tend to gasp and pull their neck back when they find out.

She’s been divorced and single by choice for about 15 years, which is a great idea for someone who prefers her own company. Danielle never wanted to have a child living in her house or coming out of her body, and revealed this self-fulfilling prophecy to her grandmother on a walk to kindergarten in 1982 like a tiny, adorable witch.

Danielle went back to college in 2008 after a 12-year, uh, let's call it a hiatus, and graduated summa cum laude in 2011, earning degrees in both English Literature and Women's Studies; in 2013, she earned her Master's degree in Gender Studies. She dropped out of her Ph.D. program after one semester, no longer able to withstand constantly being asked to use the word axiological, which, despite having a dictionary definition, doesn't actually mean anything. She likes to watch old episodes of Doctor Who when she is on deadline, one of her tattoos is based on the movie Rocky, and she will never stop using the Oxford comma. 

Danielle is 48 years old and owns a small farm in upstate New York.