Valerie Nieman - Wake Wake Wake

Selected Works

Novels

All seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist's journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie's plans begin to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a local detective on the case leaves her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father's alcoholism, her mother's abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions on prom night. As the detective gets closer to finding the truth, and Maggie's stalker is closing in, she is forced to comes to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself.

To the Bones

With elements of horror, Appalachian tall tale, and mystery, To the Bones sets four unlikely heroes against a family of predatory capitalists. "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."

-- Kirkus Reviews

Neena Gathering

"This charming, unpretentious novel delves into a different form of the pastoral, modeling itself on Thoreauvian attention to a person's place and moral actions in the spheres of nature, society, intellect..."

–Publishers Weekly

Blood Clay

Blood Clay, set in rural North Carolina, traces the "tangled social lines of the new South, the struggle of newcomers to belong, and of natives to keep their balance in changing times."

–Gently Read Literature

Poetry Collection

Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse

Set in a mid-century carnival, this collection has a cover image painted by the author during studies at Coney Island Museum. The curator of that museum, Lisa Schaefer, said of the book, "Steeped in sideshow tradition, and addressing issues of race, gender, self-concept, and creative expression, your book is beautifully written."

Hotel Worthy

Poems of love, loss, and survival.
"Like a daring archeologist, the poems of Hotel Worthy dig [deeply] into the intimate layers of years, excavating the fossils of memory, love, loss, and family history. These poems compel us to have the courage to emerge from our past shipwrecks and embark anew. This collection is a roadmap for beginning again."

–Ansel Elkins, Yale Younger Poets Prize winner

Wake Wake Wake

Debut poetry collection featuring work from Appalachia and beyond.

Short fiction collection

Fidelities

These stories, set in the rural areas and mining towns of West Virginia, focus on the rough terrain of the human heart.

Quick Links

Book trailer for To the Bones

A video sample of my Appalachian folk horror/ecojustice novel.

Book trailer for Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse

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Wake Wake Wake

Reading at the Nazim Hikmet Festival

"Like the millwright in her poem, Valerie Nieman seems "with bare hands (to) embrace live steam." Wake Wake Wake is sinew and tendon, hard muscle and bruised bone; the volume sings with every inch of the body and every breath of the spirit. If she speaks of "hearing that we have all fallen short," she yet believes-she knows-"the way a path is best walked/not by looking down/but by looking out."
Fred Chappell

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