Bio
Daniel Leonard is a composer, writer, and educator creating songs for children to support emotional development. Daniel’s songs integrate the rich soundscape of jazz and the imaginative spark of poetry to offer preschoolers a space in which to deal with difficult feelings while cultivating self-esteem and wonder.
Daniel’s honors for music, writing, and research include the Alumni Composition Prize from the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, the Hurley Prize from the Boston University Creative Writing Program, the Robert Fitzgerald Prize in Literary Translation, and the Alice M. Brennan Humanities Award. He has served as a Student Artist in Residence for the University of Leuven, a Postgraduate Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and, most recently, an Ecker Fellow at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Daniel teaches English literature at Boston College and earned a doctorate in English literature at Boston University. He teaches and researches about how contemporary American authors, including children's authors, use animals to explore relational aspects of the self.
