I’m Danielle Blum.
An experience curator, author, artist, and traveler, creating a world shaped by curiosity, creativity, and connection.
I’m interested in how we experience a life: the people we gather around us, the stories that shape our understanding, the places that change our perspective, and the things we choose to make.
My work takes different forms because my curiosity moves in different directions. I’m a creator, a cook, and a lifelong learner. I experience the world through my senses—through flavor, texture, color, atmosphere, and conversation—and bring that attention into what I create.
Under my name, these interests belong together. They are the foundations of a world I’m building and continuing to explore.
Curating experiences.
Creating connection.
I love bringing people together and considering the details that help a gathering become meaningful: the setting, the pace, the food, and the opportunities for people to engage with one another.
Through supper clubs, creative workshops, and retreats, I want to create experiences that invite people to participate, encounter different perspectives, and form connections that can continue long after the occasion itself.
My CASA supper clubs are one expression of that intention. Cooking is a labor of love, and nourishing people is one of the deepest pleasures I find in hosting. Choosing ingredients, preparing a meal, and setting a table are ways of giving someone my time and attention.
I’m also drawn to the intersection of food and culture: how a dish can carry a family’s history, how recipes change as people move, and how the rituals of preparing and sharing food express belonging. Traveling and living in different places have deepened that curiosity. A meal offers a way to encounter a place through its flavors, its traditions, and the people who bring them to the table.
That curiosity informs the experiences I create. I want there to be room for the stories behind the food, for someone to share a memory, and for a familiar ingredient to open an unfamiliar conversation.
The pleasure of hosting extends beyond what’s served. I care about the feeling of being welcomed, the exchange of perspectives, and the possibility that people who arrived as strangers might become part of each other’s lives.
Workshops offer another way to connect. Making something together gives people a shared starting point. There is room to exchange ideas, learn from each other, and discover how differently we can approach the same material or question.
These are the experiences I want to curate: considered, personal, and open to what the people in the room bring to them.
Writing through another person’s eyes.
Writing allows me to inhabit lives beyond my own.
I can enter another person’s world, understand what they believe, and follow the experiences that have made them who they are. It asks me to look beyond my first interpretation and stay with perspectives that may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
That is part of why identity runs so deeply through my work. I’m drawn to the relationship between memory and self, the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways people change.
In Fragments of Affection, those interests take the form of psychological suspense. In the world of Postcards from Rock Bottom, they emerge through travel, relationships, and starting again.
Across genres, I’m interested in the interior life: what a person carries, what others can’t see, and what it takes to understand them.
Explore my books →
Thinking through my hands.
There is a physical side to my creativity that writing alone doesn’t satisfy.
I finger paint, make sculpture, create tooth gem designs, and explore materials through the process of working with them. I love building with my hands—watching an idea acquire shape, noticing an unexpected detail, and responding to what’s in front of me.
At Wild Isle Gems, that attention becomes small, considered designs that offer another form of personal expression. In painting and sculpture, it gives me space to explore color, texture, and form.
I also create workbooks and planning tools, including Built From Within. These bring my interest in identity and everyday life into something people can work with themselves: a place to reflect, organize their thoughts, and consider what they want to create next.
Some of my work is practical. Some is expressive. The process of making matters to me in both.
A traveler.
A lifelong learner.
Originally from Nevada, I’ve lived in eight countries and traveled to more than forty. Madeira is now home.
Living in different places has influenced how I understand belonging, community, and the many ways a life can be lived. It has also taught me to question what I consider familiar or obvious.
I’m drawn to the everyday details of a place: how people gather, what they cook, the materials they build with, and the customs that give ordinary moments meaning.
I want to experience a place with attention—to taste, listen, observe, and understand something of the lives being lived there.
That way of learning stays with me. It informs the worlds I write, the food I prepare, the things I make, and the experiences I bring people into.
Read my stories & observations →
A world with room
for all of it.
Danielle Blum is the home for this body of work: experiences, books, art, and tools connected by the same curiosity.
I’m creating a world, not narrowing myself to a single niche. Each part gives something to the others. Travel informs the writing. Cooking becomes a way to gather. Working with my hands opens another way of thinking. Conversations introduce perspectives I might never have encountered alone.
You might find your way here through a book, a shared table, a workshop, or something I’ve made.
My hope is that you find something that speaks to your own interests—and room to explore beyond them.