Writer & Editor
DANI ARIELI is a lover of weird, dark, and archaic literature—coddling eccentricity like stitches to a flesh wound, which is sedulously sewn into her poetry and prose. She has creative works featured in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, 7th-Circle Pyrite, Beyond Words, and more, with one of her short-fiction pieces having accrued a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the marketing and publicity specialist for At Bay Press, and is an alumna of Sheridan College’s Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing and Publishing program. If Dani is not obsessing over her diction or syntax, you might find her wandering amidst Gothic architecture or wettish woods.
Writing Philosophy
DANI ARIELI coddles eccentricism like stitches to a flesh wound. Prose should be stretched, flipped, tugged, wrapped, and amalgamated into what-ever the writer desires; for it is a mould, and what is utilising such a tool if not to nestle one’s mind amidst? The two forms of authorial diableries of which I focus on are in the bleeding vein of prose-poetry and literary fiction. Verily, it is the peculiar that fascinates me so!—the words that cause your fingers to twitch upon the cuff of the page, urging you to slam the book shut; but these are the works which stick with a reader.
To bleed into a far more specific vein—the types of prose I harbour an unapologetic affinity toward are historical and literary fiction, as well as folk-horror. The poetics of my mind are steeped in the annals of free-verse, erasure, and prose-poetry. Readers often seek out comfort in fiction, but there is an aphrodisiac in discomfort. Delving into the mind of a character is exceedingly intricate when related to these genres, and this is a literary endeavour wherein I find myself trodding many marshes through.
At the crux of my debauchery, there is an elaborate motif—a chronic one, if you will. As someone who deals with the blight of chronic pain, one of—if not, the only—way in which I manage to cope with my reality is through these eccentric and unconventional tales; depravity and abyssal themes, sexuality and sensuality, limerence and tragedy, it all amalgamates into one, caterwauling abyss of literacy. Writing is my muse, but it is also my vice; and within the concoction of Muse and Vice, births Virtue. Write what you know, but also, write what you want to feel—how you want to feel, why you want to feel… Allow the abyss to stare back; welcome its embrace, a brush upon your lips, fingers at your throat...