About
Valerie Nieman is the author of five novels, soon to be six, or make that seven!
Upon the Corner of the Moon: A Tale of the Macbeths, will be published in 2025 by Regal House Press. It begins the story of the Macbeths you've never known.
Also coming up is Dead Hand, a sequel to To the Bones, that takes Lourana and Darrick to Ireland as they flee the Kavanaghs and seek answers to questions that reach back to mythic times.
Her most recent novel is Sir Walter Raleigh Award-winning In the Lonely Backwater, a YA/crossover thriller in the Southern gothic tradition, published in 2022 by Regal House/Fitzroy Books.
Of To the Bones, a cross-genre mystery published in 2019, Kirkus says: "Evocative, intelligent prose conjures an anxious mood and strong sense of place while spotlighting the societal and environmental devastation wrought by the coal mining industry."
For audiophiles, both In the Lonely Backwater and To the Bones are available as audiobooks on many platforms.
Other novels are Blood Clay, a novel of the New South, which was honored with the Eric Hoffer Prize in General Fiction; Survivors, a novel about the Rust Belt of the 1970s, and her first book, Neena Gathering, reissued in 2012 as a classic in the post-apocalyptic genre.
Nieman's third poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, debuted with a reading at the Coney Island Museum and was a runner-up for the Brockman-Campbell Book Prize. Her second poetry collection, Hotel Worthy, appeared in 2015 from Press 53, and poems from that book were nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best Short Fictions of 2016, where the title poem was a finalist. She is also the author of Wake Wake Wake, and a collection of short stories, Fidelities.
She was a 2013-2014 North Carolina Arts Council poetry fellow, and has received an NEA creative writing fellowship as well as major grants in West Virginia and Kentucky. Her awards include the Greg Grummer, Nazim Hikmet, and Byron Herbert Reece poetry prizes.
Nieman graduated from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte. A former professor and journalist, she now teaches creative writing at conferences and workshops.
Many thanks to Allie Osborne and WDTV for this interview while I was back in West Virginia in connection with the donation of my papers to the Regional History Center, West Virginia University Library. Schedules and deadlines necessitated a Zoom hookup.