DANIEL (DANNY) GETZOFF

Daniel Getzoff is a Los Angeles-based community activist, bicycle traveler, essayist-blogger, playwright-performer, and multi-faceted nonprofit sector worker. In the past few years, he has also added fiction writer to that list. His first published story appears in 42 Stories Anthology Presents: Book of 42. The story is one of 42 in the “Fight” chapter; his was selected for the Story of Excellence Award for the category; as prizewinner, he was invited to write the introduction to the chapter. He was granted residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) in Temecula, California, Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi, Finland (2024) and at Playa Summerlake in south central Oregon (2015, 2016) to work on his first novel, Nicknames for Harold, the manuscript of which is complete and is out for submission.

Daniel has self-published about 90 Handlebar Confessional essays about experiencing (mostly) Red-State America on a bicycle, riding 11,000+ miles over 3 solo bike treks across the continental United States. He is currently working on an upcoming memoir about these experiences largely drawn from what’s posted on this site as well as https://handlebarconfessional.blogspot.com (2009 trip).

From 2019 to 2021, he was contracted by Narcotics Anonymous World Services to cull source material submitted by members and write daily entries for a 12-Step recovery meditation book that will be read and used by recovering addicts all over the world for decades to come (A Spiritual Principle A Day, published by NAWS, Inc., 2022).

As a playwright, Danny has been called “an unmistakable talent” by the LA Weekly and that “Getzoff’s writing grapples with the eternal midnight of the soul” (Backstage West). In 2014, he was commissioned by the University of California, Riverside, to write a short work of fiction, Parlo(u)r Game(s) as a companion to a work of ethnography-based theater in development there. His play, At Least Until You Die, received high critical praise and a Garland/Backstage West Award nomination for Playwriting.

As a writer-performer, Danny has written and performed pieces at several spoken-word venues in Los Angeles, including Spark Off Rose, The Eclectic Company Theatre, The Road Theater Company and Beyond Baroque. As part of Take Back Theatre Collective in Manchester, U.K., in January 2017, he performed his piece “Seeking Post-Election Connection, or A Desperate Attempt to Incorporate a Shattered-Glass Metaphor into Fucking Everything” at The Comedy Store-Manchester. In February 2020, he again performed a solo piece for Take Back at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. In an earlier incarnation, he was an actor in theater, films, and commercials.

Danny has also had a career in public health since the late 1990s, having developed and implemented harm reduction-based programs and services that address the health and socioeconomic needs of communities impacted by poverty and housing insecurity, HIV, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration.

Danny received his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating with high honors in a multi-disciplinary, individual course of study relating to issues of community, sexuality, culture and identity. He also received an actor training certificate from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (London, UK).