Danielle Maisano is a novelist and doctoral researcher. Her debut novel, The Ardent Witness (Victorina Press, 2019), drawn from her experience as a Peace Corps health worker in Togo, West Africa, was a finalist for the 2019 International Book Awards. She is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of West London, where her research brings together literary fiction and critical theory to examine neoliberalism, feminist frameworks and political resistance

Maisano studied journalism at Wayne State University and worked as a writer and editor in Detroit before joining the Peace Corps in 2011. Her two years in Togo, working primarily on women's health and gender equity through health education, became the foundation for The Ardent Witness. In 2013, she moved to London to study International Relations and Diplomacy at SOAS.

She has written for The Real Detroit Weekly, WDET Detroit Public Radio, Shado Magazine, Synchronicity Magazine and DiEM25. She has also worked as an editor for Exiled Ink and as a contributing editor for the recently published anthology Resistance: Voices of Exiled Writers (Palewell Press, 2020).