Laura Valeri is a writer, writing consultant, editor, translator, and faculty in the department of Writing & Linguistics at Georgia Southern University. She is the author of three story collections, a book of essays, and numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Her latest release is titled After Life as a Human, a memoir about a little-known island off of the Florida Gulf Coast, its beauty, remoteness, unusual history, and uncertain future. An Italian language version was published with Galaad Edizioni in Italy under the title L’Isola del Silenzio, (The Island of Silence) translated by Francesca Diano.
Valeri’s debut collection of short stories, The Kinds of Things Saints Do, was an Iowa John Simmons Award winner, and a winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Award in Fiction. Her second book, a story-cycle titled Safe in Your Head, was a winner of the Stephen F. Austin literary prize in fiction and a finalist in various national contests. Her most recent collection of stories, The Dead Still Here, was published by Stephen F Austin University Press.
Laura is a Hambidge fellow and was a Walter E Dakins Fellow in Fiction with the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Writing & Linguistics at Georgia Southern University, where, with the help of her colleagues, she also created and currently edits the literary journal Wraparound South.
Laura earned two MFAs in creative writing, the first at Florida International University as a generalist, and then at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (University of Iowa) for fiction. She earned her undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing at New York University.
Her writing has won national contests and has appeared in various literary magazines, including South85, The Forge, Waccamaw, Fiction Southeast, Temenos, Web Conjunctions, Gulfstream Magazine, Glimmer Train, and others. She also publishes creative nonfiction, poetry, translations of literary works, and critical and pedagogical essays.
Author | Laura Valeri 