Laura Valeri is a writer, a writing consultant, an editor, and faculty in the Department of English at Georgia Southern University. She is the author of three story collections, a book of essays, and numerous works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry published in literary journals across the world.

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 collection of stories, Safe in Your Head, was a winner of the Stephen F. Austin literary prize in fiction and a finalist in various national contests. Her new collection of stories, The Dead Still Here, was published in summer 2018 with Stephen F Austin University Press, and her collection of essays, Dog Island, is forthcoming with Galaad Edizioni in Italy.

Laura is a Hambidge fellow and was a Walter E Dakins Fellow in Fiction with the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Writing and 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 from Florida International University as a generalist, and then with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (University of Iowa) for fiction.  She earned her undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing from New York University.

Her writing has won national contests and has appeared in various literary magazines, including in Waccamaw,  Fiction Southeast, Temenos,  Web Conjunctions, Gulfstream Magazine, Glimmer Train and many others. She also publishes nonfiction, poetry, and translations.