About Her:
Valerie Marie Arvidson is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and hybrid/inter-media writing; she is also an amateur visual artist. She has published stories, personal essays and poetry. She recently earned her PhD in Creative Writing with a doctoral scholarship at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her dissertation focuses on the third space between image and text in hybrid fiction. Originally from outside Boston, she lived in Oakland, and then Seattle for several years before moving to New Zealand with her husband. She now lives in Massachusetts and has two small children.
Valerie earned her B.A. in English with a focus in Creative Writing from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire (2008) and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle (2012).
In Seattle she taught literature and research writing at Green River College and creative writing and composition at the University of Washington. While living in Oakland, Valerie was an AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow for Citizen Schools.
Her writing has appeared online or in print with Permafrost, Forage, Capital, Headland, Drunken Boat (Anomaly), The Seattle Review, Blunderbuss, Anomalous Press, Hunger Mountain, and Apt.
Her PhD thesis includes a creative and critical exploration of photograph-embedded fiction, with special focus on how the combination of image and text reflects a longing for belonging, wholeness, or home. Her novel follows the inner workings of a family and weaves in visual material to help illuminate the stories of her characters.
Photo of Valerie by Roy Marin @ http://www.roymarin.com