Danielle Burby ’12 is a playwright who double-majored in creative writing and women’s studies at Hamilton College. Women’s studies fueled her writing, opened her eyes to injustice and instilled in her a desire for action.
“Words are my weapon of choice and inequality (whether gender, race, class or sexuality-based) is my topic of choice,” Burby says.
A theater company is producing her play Hooked, which she wrote for her women’s studies thesis. Burby, who works as a literary assistant at the Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency in New York City, wrote another play that was included in another theatre's summer reading series.
“I picked my majors for love and because they were what I was good at. But I also knew very early on that I wanted to work in book publishing and that, career-wise, that’s where I wanted to go,” Burby says. “So, for me, creative writing was a very practical, career-focused decision. Women’s studies was my wild card, but it actually turned out to be very useful in my life after Hamilton as well. I think people might be shocked to hear it, but I have actually very directly benefited from my women’s studies in my professional life.”
