Author Valerie Nieman will read at noon Friday, Oct. 14, in 130 Colson Hall. This reading is sponsored by the Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Nieman, a WVU graduate, is a novelist, poet, short story writer, travel writer, literary magazine editor, and teacher.
“Most of Val’s work is set in Appalachia, but its appeal isn’t only geographic,” said Mark Brazaitis, an English professor and the director of WVU’s Creative Writing Program. “Excellent writing like hers reaches us on so many levels. We’re delighted to have her return to her alma mater to read.”
“Blood Clay,” her most recent release, is her third novel. Two earlier works also delved into the nature of family and community. Her 2000 novel “Survivors” took readers into the hard lives and hard times of a West Virginia factory town in the early 1970s. Her first novel, “Neena Gathering,” was a science fiction tale set in the Appalachians.
“Fidelities,” her collection of short fiction, features stories set in rural areas from the Alleghenies to the Carolina Piedmont, most of them published in journals such as “The Kenyon Review” and “Arts & Letters,” and in anthologies such as “Degrees of Elevation” and “Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Authors.”
Her poetry collection, “Wake Wake Wake,” was published in 2006. Her work has been selected in two national chapbook competitions and appeared in such journals as “Poetry,” “North Carolina Literary Review,” “Blackbird”,” New Letters,” “Redivider,” and the “Southern Poetry Review,” as well as numerous anthologies, most recently “After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events” and “Southern Appalachian Poetry: An Anthology of Works by 37 Poets.”
Her awards have included an NEA fellowship, the 1998 and 2002 Elizabeth Simpson Smith prizes for the best short story by a writer in the Carolinas, fellowships from the West Virginia Humanities Commission and Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the 1999 Greg Grummer Prize in poetry from “Phoebe.”
She teaches writing workshops at venues including North Carolina Writers Network and the John C. Campbell Folk School. Currently the poetry editor of “Prime Number,” she was a founding editor of “Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art in the New World.”
Nieman graduated from West Virginia University and worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for more than a quarter-century. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte in 2004 and since 2000 has been on the faculty at North Carolina A&T State University, where she is now an associate professor teaching in the undergraduate creative writing concentration.
For more information, contact Mark Brazaitis, director of creative writing, at (304) 293-9707 or Mark.Brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu.
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