Hi, I’m Dan Pizappi. My work spans technical documentation, writing instruction, and literary scholarship. I also write poetry and fiction.
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
I’m a technical documentation engineer at TrueNAS. I work with engineers and testers to understand how the software behaves, then write guides and release notes that help readers decide what to do. I also design documentation sites and maintain the tools we use to build and publish them.
I earned my PhD in English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where I taught first-year composition, workplace writing, and literature. At UT, I studied how writers including Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Jesmyn Ward represent history and imagine the future. I remain active in the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society as a past president and current board member, and I’m working on a graphic novel adaptation of Roberts’s The Time of Man. I also served as managing editor of Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts.
Outside work, I like making music, cooking, and trying my hand at gardening.
I’m passionate about producing clear, concise, and effective documentation that communicates complex technical concepts with ease and precision.
I write and edit software and hardware documentation, from tutorials and technical reference to release notes. I work with engineers and testers to verify details and explain them to readers with different levels of technical experience.
I organize documentation around readers’ questions and decisions, using Diátaxis to distinguish different kinds of guidance. My work includes navigation, Pagefind search, and content that explains why and when to use a feature.
I build documentation sites with Hugo and Docsy and maintain a docs-as-code workflow with Git, GitHub, and Jenkins. I manage publishing across software versions and coordinate release work through Jira and Scrum.
I use Python and JavaScript to automate documentation tasks, and HTML/CSS, YAML, and Go templates to build and maintain sites. Projects include generating application catalog pages from metadata and creating reusable Hugo components.
I develop AI-assisted workflows for drafting, editing, and maintenance with Claude Code and ChatGPT, including release notes, catalog updates, and reusable documentation skills. I’m also exploring retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and multi-agent workflows for research, drafting, and review.
My PhD in English and more than a decade of writing instruction inform how I investigate unfamiliar subjects and explain what I find. I design assignments that help students evaluate evidence, make choices about audience, and apply their writing skills beyond the classroom.
My creative writing practice spans poetry and fiction, exploring themes of memory, place, and the intersections of personal and historical narratives. My work has appeared in journals including Anti-Heroin Chic, The Mantle, and The Ekphrastic Review. I’ve also served as Managing Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts (Issues 11-13) and co-edited the collection Kentucky Writers: The Deus Loci and the Lyrical Landscape.
Creative PortfolioI taught first-year composition, workplace writing, and literature at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where I earned my PhD in English. My academic portfolio includes course materials and selected scholarship on American fiction, with particular interests in how literature represents history and imagines the future.
View Teaching and Course Materials View Academic Portfolio CV and Résumé
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