Bio:Valerie Nieman Colander

Valerie Nieman (Valerie Nieman Colander) is the author of one SF novel, a mainstream novel, short stories, and poetry.

Her first novel, Neena Gathering, was a post-apocalyptic tale that appeared in 1988 as the debut SF title from Pageant Books and was translated for the Brazilian market.

Her fantasy/SF short stories appeared in small magazines and in the anthology Tales of Magic Realism by Women. Her narrative poem The Naming of the Lost appeared in The Round Table and was collected in Modern Arthurian Literature and Arthurian Literature by Women.

Her novel Survivors, published in 2000, takes readers into the hard lives and hard times of a West Virginia factory town in the early 1970s. Her collection of short fiction, Fidelities, includes stories set in rural areas from the Alleghenies to the North Carolina Piedmont that were earlier published in journals such as The Kenyon Review and Arts & Letters, and in anthologies. Fidelities appeared in 2004 from Vandalia Books, an imprint of West Virginia University Press.

Her poetry collection, Wake Wake Wake, was published in 2006 by Press 53. Her poetry was earlier collected in two chapbooks, How We Live, from State Street Press, 1997, and Slipping Out of Old Eve, published in a special edition of Sing Heavenly Muse! 1988. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Poetry, New Letters, REDiViDER, and West Branch, and in numerous anthologies.

Her awards have included a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1998 and 2002 Elizabeth Simpson Smith prizes for the best short story by a writer in the Carolinas and the 1999 Greg Grummer Prize in poetry from Phoebe. She was a founding editor of Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art in the New World and a director of the associated literary conference.

Born in New York State, Nieman graduated from West Virginia University and worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for more than a quarter-century. Her travel writing has appeared in the Nashville Tennessean, the Buffalo News and GoWorldTravel.com. She completed her M.F.A. in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte in 2004, and joined the faculty of North Carolina A&T State University, where she is an assistant professor with a dual appointment in English and journalism.