Valley Haggard has written in short and long-form all her life. She is a big fan of the postcard, the 6-word memoir, and drawers full of unfinished manuscripts. She has slept in tents, hostels, motels, couches, tool sheds, log cabins, bunk beds, and ship bowels for short periods of time, and the house she grew up in for much longer than that. She has lived in Virginia, New York, Italy, Colorado, Arkansas, and Alaska, holding jobs as a Waffle House waitress, Dude Ranch Cabin Girl, cruise ship stewardess, and hotel maid. She has written book reviews, author interviews, and first-person columns; judged fiction contests and fellowships, and sat on non-profit writing boards. She is the recipient of a Richmond Magazine 2014 Theresa Pollak Prize, a 2015 Style Weekly Women in the Arts Award, and the winner of the 2018 James River Writers’ Emyl Jenkins award. The founder of Richmond Young Writers in 2009, Valley now leads creative nonfiction marathons, workshops, and retreats for adults. She is the founder of Life in 10 Minutes, the author of The Halfway House for Writers and Surrender Your Weapons: Writing to Heal, and the co-editor of Nine Lives: a Life in 10 Minutes Anthology. She has a handsome husband, a brilliant son, an addictive personality, and a voracious appetite for all things word. Her memoir, There's No Accounting for the Strangeness of Things will be published in December 2021.