Fidelities is the first collection of eighteen short stories to be published by this multi-faceted author. The stories in Fidelities, which are mostly set in West Virginia, are both heartrending and beautiful. Nieman published her first novel, Neena Gathering, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, in 1988. She has also published two poetry chapbooks, Slipping out of Old Eve and How We Live. Her second fictional work, Survivors, was published in 2000.

FIDELITIES

Literature & Fiction

NIEMAN, VALERIE

Contemporary

Vandalia Press

Survivors: A Novel

Van Neste Books

This collection of poetry by award-winning poet Valerie Nieman is praised by National Book Award finalist Sarah Lindsay, who says, "Valerie Nieman writes poems with long tap roots, and poems with sharp beaks that strike swiftly. They cast off from the known, or fix the familiar with a clear gaze, and unmoor the reader either way. For a nameless hunger and restlessness, here are guide and supplies and hills to climb, all in one fine book." Fred Chappell, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina, offers the following: "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." Would you be stout of heart, steadfast of purpose? Read Valerie Nieman."

Wake Wake Wake

Poetry

Press 53

Post-apocalyptic West Virginia....A nation divided, turns on itself with brutal, primitive cruelty, unleashing the ghastly mutations of blistering chemical warfare that leave a desolate wasteland where the United States once flourished... Menaced by roaming bands of scavengers, alone and lonely on a remote West Virginia farm, Neena and her aunt battle to carve a marginal existence from the ashes of an annihilated civilization. Suddenly Neena's missing uncle arrives out of the north, shattering their uneasy peace with his haunting memories, his worldly ways, and violent passions. Against her will, the woman-child Neena is forced to choose her destiny in the shape of two men. One, handsome and vital, teaches her hatred and fear; the other, horribly transformed by the chemical Change, lays bare the intricacies of the human heart. Will Neena bow to the demands of kin and blood, or brave the gentle path, sowing fresh seeds of hope in a savage future no one can second guess? "[A] charming, unpretentious novel... an auspicious debut." --Publishers Weekly "A great book and I'm glad I took the time the read it." --Cosy Catastrophe "A pleasant variation on the post-holocaust form." --Locus

Neena Gathering (A Post-Apocalyptic Novel)

Genre Fiction

Permuted Press

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.

In the Lonely Backwater

United States

Regal House Publishing

Survivors

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Blood Clay tells the story of Tracey Gaines, who has moved to rural Saul County, North Carolina, to escape the wreckage of a divorce and becomes a teacher at an alternative school. She devotes herself to renovating an old farmhouse but finds she can't as easily build connections in this new place. When the community splits, she finds an ally in Dave Fordham, a native son who struck out for new opportunities, only to face his own trauma and a forced return home. Elizabeth Stuckey-French says, "Val Nieman has written what is destined to become a classic novel of Southern life."

Blood Clay

Check into Hotel Worthy, Valerie Nieman's new book of poems, and you'll never want to leave. There abides in its pages an uncanny past wrought into poems that spring from a memory - from a vast, liturgical acumen - that unites the dead with the living, restores the abandoned, returns the missing. Nieman knows the names of things, how those things piece together, how they sunder; and, while she refuses to lie, her truths are exquisite. This is a startling book. The language - its lyric nuance, its plaintive harmonies, its ceremonial beauty - is unforgettable. In the words of the poet, "Each blow of wood on wood / sets ripples on the water: / deo gratias, deo gratias."Deo gratias indeed - for Hotel Worthy. -Joseph Bathanti, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina

Hotel Worthy

To the Bones is a genre mashup, a satirical look at the coal industry's effects on Appalachia through the lenses of mystery, horror, tall tales, and eco-justice thriller.

To the Bones

West Virginia University Press

Dead Hand

Avig Press

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