Valerie Nieman's latest, In the Lonely Backwater, a YA/crossover suspense novel in the Southern gothic tradition, is being published by Regal House/Fitzroy Books in 2022. To the Bones, her folk horror/thriller about coal country, was published by West Virginia University Press and was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining Blood Clay (Eric Hoffer Award) and two other novels. She has also published a short fiction collection and three poetry collections, most recently, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse from Press 53, which was runner-up for the Brockman-Campbell Prize. She has published widely in journals and anthologies, and has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A native of western New York, Nieman holds degrees from WVU and Queens University of Charlotte, and was a reporter and farmer in West Virginia before moving to North Carolina, where she worked as an editor and as a creative writing professor at NC A&T State University. Her activities include hiking and gardening.