Valerie Wetlaufer

Valerie Wetlaufer was born and raised in Iowa, and has also lived in Paris. She earned a BA and MA in teaching at Bennington College, an MFA at Florida State University, and a PhD at the University of Utah, where she was a Vice Presidential Fellow. She is the author of Mysterious Acts by My People (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and three chapbooks: Scent of Shatter (2010), Bad Wife Spankings (2011), winner of the 2010 Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest, and Nostrums (2013). Reviewer Molly Sutton Kiefer writes, “Valerie Wetlaufer’s debut collection Mysterious Acts by My People is a flirtation, seeped in desire and violence, the two often tangled with one another in a fraught tryst. ... somehow, the bulk of the poems ring as absolute truths, while donning personas and flights of fancy.”
 
Wetlaufer is the editor of Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women, and her writing has appeared in Word Riot, Codex Journal, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere. In 2010, she received a fellowship to attend the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Retreat. She lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and has taught at Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City campus, the University of Utah, and Florida State University. She is also a birth doula.