Danielle Davenport and her sister Gabrielle Davenport are co-founders of BEM | books & more, a Brooklyn-based, globally oriented bookstore at the intersection of food and Blackness.
Established online in January 2021 and operating since in a series of long-term pop-ups and through events, BEM is proud to serve as a home for readers, writers, cooks, and eaters passionate about Black cultures in all their diversity. Taking an expansive approach to the nexus of food, literature, and culture, BEM celebrates Black food by bringing works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama where food appears into conversation with cookbooks and culinary studies in an exploration of how what feeds us defines us. BEM, a mission-driven for-profit company, is currently fundraising in anticipation of a brick & mortar opening in the coming months. Shop BEM online at bembrooklyn.com and on Instagram @bembrooklyn.
Danielle is also an actor and writer who has recurred most recently on Peacock's The Calling. Prior film and TV credits include Blue Bloods (CBS), The Blacklist (NBC), Power (Starz), Sneaky Pete (Amazon), Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Master of None, HBO’s High Maintenance and Boardwalk Empire, The Breaks (VH1) and others. Danielle has worked at theaters including The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theater, Theater for a New Audience, New York Theater Workshop, The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, INTAR, New York Stage and Film, MCC, The Lark, Playwrights’ Realm and others, with favorite performance credits including An Octoroon (Theater for a New Audience/Soho Rep), Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb), Neighbors (The Public Theater), Adoration of the Old Woman (INTAR) and Be the Death of Me (The Civilians).
Current and recent writing projects include a television pilot set in the world of reproductive justice and developed during New York Stage and Film’s Filmmakers’ Workshop and a co-authored article on microaggressions in simulated legal practice published in the Villanova Law Review.
Fluent in Spanish, French and Portuguese, she is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Mellon fellow, an Experiential Learning Lab fellow at the NYU School of Law, and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College with a B.A. in Theater (Honors) and Comparative Literature and Society with a focus on the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Alongside her creative pursuits, she’s accumulated experience as a communications consultant; a freelance tutor, editor, and translator; and in a number of NYC restaurants.
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