Valerie Nieman

In the Lonely Backwater, my latest novel, received the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, presented for the best book of fiction by a North Carolina writer. I am also the author of To the Bones and three earlier novels, and books of short fiction and poetry. My poetry and short prose have been published widely here and abroad. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, I have held state and NEA creative writing fellowships.

Outside the CV, my experiences have included hiking solo across Scotland, reporting from a working coal mine, idling and observing as a flaneur in New York and Dublin and San Francisco, managing sailboat races, raising cattle, fly fishing, building one home and remodeling two others, and teaching undergraduates to find their writing voice. I began a lifetime of woods-wandering as a small child in western New York, and continue to this day. All this finds its way into my novels and poems. 

You can find me as valnieman on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and at http://www.valnieman.com