Valerie Miner – författare

Loss and renewal in the lives of an individual and a communityAfter Eden is a provocative novel that examines the meaning of home and homelessness among people who see such issues as more than abstractions. In a story populated by Pomo Indians, Euro-American ranchers and vintners, and Mexican American migrant laborers, Valerie Miner deftly juxtaposes differing cultural views of wilderness, trespassing, and home. Her dramatic novel is contemporary, while reflecting on two centuries of change in a seemingly Edenic place.Looking forward to relief from her job as a city planner in Chicago, Emily Adams begins a much-needed vacation at her Northern California cabin. But the sudden death of her life partner forces her to re-examine personal commitments. Caught up in reflection, she comes to understand the intricacies of life in her pastoral retreat - complexities that she had never before considered.In the modern-day Eden of California's coastal range, Emily finds conflict all around her: between loggers and environmentalists, farmworkers and immigration authorities, newcomers establishing a lesbian community and long-time residents clinging to traditional ways.As Emily learns to overcome grief, her story moves from loss to renewal for both the individual and the community. A decidedly feminist view of the New West, After Eden weaves lyrical prose with a different look at ""family values"" and what it really means to be human.

After Eden is a provocative novel that examines the meaning of home and homelessness among people who see such issues as more than abstractions. In a story populated by Pomo Indians, Euro-American ranchers and vintners, and Mexican American migrant laborers, Valerie Miner deftly juxtaposes differing cultural views of wilderness, trespassing, and home. Her dramatic novel is contemporary, while reflecting on two centuries of change in a seemingly Edenic place.Looking forward to relief from her job as a city planner in Chicago, Emily Adams begins a much-needed vacation at her Northern California cabin. But the sudden death of her life partner forces her to re-examine personal commitments. Caught up in reflection, she comes to understand the intricacies of life in her pastoral retreat complexities that she had never before considered.In the modern-day Eden of California's coastal range, Emily finds conflict all around her: between loggers and environmentalists, farmworkers and immigration authorities, newcomers establishing a lesbian community and long-time residents clinging to traditional ways.As Emily learns to overcome grief, her story moves from loss to renewal for both the individual and the community. A decidedly feminist view of the New West, After Eden weaves lyrical prose with a different look at 'family values' and what it really means to be human.

"This is the story I have been writing for my whole life. With my life," writes Valerie Miner in this elegant and compassionate account of her family's migration from Edinburgh's tenements across the world. The Low Road explores location and dislocation in a large, poverty stricken Scottish family. Focusing on the life journeys of her grandmother, her mother, and herself, Miner searches for truth about family members, unveiling family secrets and missing histories. This powerful and moving memoir is a dramatic passage through poverty, immigration, and national and sexual identity. Utterly engrossing, The Low Road navigates between family fable and fact as Miner leads us through her discoveries about back-street abortion and tuberculosis, orphanhood, exile, estrangement, and reconciliation to reach a place of acceptance and understanding.

Abundant Light, Valerie Miner's fourth collection of short fiction, reveals a master storyteller writing in her prime. This collection looks closely at definitions of family and asks how this fragile and frightening entity can shape us, nurture us, or even destroy us. These stories also explore friendship as it is enriched by differences in nationality, race, class, and gender. Whether set in Calcutta, Cornwall, Alberta, Edinburgh, or the Coastal Range of California, each story is imbued with a resonant spirit of place. Light is a presence and metaphor in each of these stories, physical light as well as light ranging through human insight and reflection, as characters face the possibilities of forgiveness, acceptance and reunion. This collection contains stories from the best literary journals, The Georgia Review, New Letters, Salmagundi, Southwest Review,Prairie Schooner, as well as from BBC Radio 4 and Ms.

A gripping novel of politics, academia, and murderAssistant professor Nan Weaver, an outspoken feminist, is working toward tenure at Berkeley. Nan’s blue-collar family left her with a legacy of endurance and hard work, and she is dedicated to her ideals and her students.But Nan’s bold campaign against on-campus sexual harassment may be putting her career prospects in jeopardy. When an infamously chauvinistic male English professor turns up dead in his office, everyone suspects activist Nan. But she is innocent. And she knows who the murderer is.A fast-paced, nontraditional mystery that places a strong woman in a battle for her innocence and principles, Murder in the English Department is a must-read for academics and mystery lovers alike.

An indispensable collection of essays reflecting on the historical and cultural relevance of feminist movements across the globe In these remarkably far-reaching writings, author and journalist Valerie Miner delivers a complex and engaging volume of essential reading. This book touches on topics ranging from suburban housewives to lesbian identity to feminist thought. Miner provides an important perspective on the interrelated concepts of authorship, gender identity, and social criticism. Included are examinations of the works of Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, and May Sarton, meditations on writing, and reflections on the cultural legacy of feminism.Miner’s insights are both perspicacious and thought provoking. Written with profound passion and knowledge, these tracts are of tremendous value to all readers engaged with the politics of equality.

As World War II rages abroad, a group of women forge the bonds of sisterhood in AmericaIn 1938, while tensions in Europe are reaching a boiling point, four young women with big ambitions enter secretarial school in San Francisco. Motivated to attain the financial stability that eluded their parents, they go to battle for their futures. Moira, of Scottish descent, dreams of being an actress. Ann yearns for the education her Jewish immigrant parents provided for her brother, but not for her. Japanese American Wanda experiences firsthand the racial injustices running rampant in the United States. And Teddy, who left the Dust Bowl for sunny California, comes to startling realizations about herself as the war progresses. These women will be both buoyed and challenged by their dreams, experiencing love, loss, and everything in between. Against the backdrop of a nation gripped by fear and paranoia, Miner eloquently captures the spirit of wartime on the home front.

Two old friends who have not seen each other for decades spend a week hiking through the stunning scenery of California’s High Sierra Twenty-five years ago, a group of five high schoolers trekked through the High Sierra. Now, two of them—lesbian Kath and straight Adele—come back to repeat their journey and renew their friendship. In chapters that alternate between the women’s voices, they reveal their pasts, their thoughts, and their reactions both to the scenery and to each other. For Kath, the sublime topography of the Sierra is inspiring and invigorating. Adele is more trepidatious. Over the course of their journey up to High Country, old stories, tensions, dreams, and disappointments come to the surface.A unique study of the complexity of the bonds between women, this transporting book, written with elegance and restraint, is among Miner’s finest work.

This novel in stories tracks ten years in the life of Susan, a journalist and feminist, during a time of transition in AmericaSusan is an activist. And yet, though her political ideals form the center of her life, she questions her convictions. At the heart of this string of interconnected stories are tensions among ideas, feelings, and action. Miner deftly interweaves Susan’s story with the tales of women whom Susan will never meet. The result is a textured and enveloping book that creates a sense of universality.Written with a deep understanding of activism, Miner’s novelistic retrospective of the feminist movement questions everything from marriage to Marxism. This fascinating work gives a true and unflinching view of what it means to be a woman in the world.

An assistant professor’s fight against campus harassment soon becomes a fight for her life in this “totally compelling and utterly modern mystery” (Judy Grahn, American Book Award–winning author). Assistant professor Nan Weaver, an outspoken feminist, is working toward tenure at Berkeley. Nan’s blue-collar family left her with a legacy of endurance and hard work, and she is dedicated to her ideals and her students. But Nan’s bold campaign against on-campus sexual harassment may be putting her career prospects in jeopardy. When an infamously chauvinistic male English professor turns up dead in his office, everyone suspects activist Nan. But she is innocent. And she knows who the murderer is. A fast-paced, nontraditional mystery that places a strong woman in a battle for her innocence and principles, Murder in the English Department is a must-read for academics and mystery lovers alike.

Two old friends who have not seen each other for decades spend a week hiking through the stunning scenery of California’s High Sierra Twenty-five years ago, a group of five high schoolers trekked through the High Sierra. Now, two of them—lesbian Kath and straight Adele—come back to repeat their journey and renew their friendship. In chapters that alternate between the women’s voices, they reveal their pasts, their thoughts, and their reactions both to the scenery and to each other. For Kath, the sublime topography of the Sierra is inspiring and invigorating. Adele is more trepidatious. Over the course of their journey up to High Country, old stories, tensions, dreams, and disappointments come to the surface.A unique study of the complexity of the bonds between women, this transporting book, written with elegance and restraint, is among Miner’s finest work.

As World War II rages abroad, a group of women forge the bonds of sisterhood in AmericaIn 1938, while tensions in Europe are reaching a boiling point, four young women with big ambitions enter secretarial school in San Francisco. Motivated to attain the financial stability that eluded their parents, they go to battle for their futures. Moira, of Scottish descent, dreams of being an actress. Ann yearns for the education her Jewish immigrant parents provided for her brother, but not for her. Japanese American Wanda experiences firsthand the racial injustices running rampant in the United States. And Teddy, who left the Dust Bowl for sunny California, comes to startling realizations about herself as the war progresses. These women will be both buoyed and challenged by their dreams, experiencing love, loss, and everything in between. Against the backdrop of a nation gripped by fear and paranoia, Miner eloquently captures the spirit of wartime on the home front.

These thirteen stories by acclaimed writer Valerie Miner explore family and intimacy in ways that are simultaneously surprising and deeply familiarThe complex nature of relationships is at the foreground of this poignant and tender collection. In the opening story, a father’s lonely death causes his children to reconsider their family life. In another tale, a stalwart woman’s fight to save an old olive tree in a rapidly transitioning San Francisco unexpectedly turns into a brutal battle.Miner’s prose is intensely personal and suffused with warmth. Populated by characters being tested by their own lives, these insightful stories offer readers keenly felt portraits of people in transition.

Family, friends, and strangers reveal their shared vulnerabilities when connecting and parting in this short story collection from an award-winning author. Lambda Literary Award finalist Valerie Miner's Bread and Salt features sixteen stories that explore people's relationships, those that are nurtured to last, others that are lost to time, and spontaneous meetings that change one's perspective in unexpected, enlightening ways. These stories take readers across the United States and to Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. A cancer survivor finds a home and a family in a Mediterranean villa whose occupants share their appreciation for delicious cuisine, multicultural artistry, and the mystery of love in "e;Il Piccolo Tesoro."e;Someone's watching over the welfare of a widowed postal worker, restoring her faith in life after tragedy in "e;Quiet as the Moon."e;Commuters become a community when an "e;Incident on the Tracks"e; gives a trio of travelers an opportunity to open up about their lives. "e;The Women at Coral Villas"e; strike up a friendship while vacationing in Indonesia despite differences in age, culture, and experience as they struggle to communicate with and understand one another. A visit to Tunisia brings back decades-old memories of a woman's lost love. But her desire to find him is complicated when she finds herself questioning his involvement in a bombing in "e;Bread and Salt."e;Whether traveling internationally or staying close to home, remembering the past or considering the future, reconciling with family or meeting someone new, the characters in Valerie Miner's stories come into each other's orbit under circumstances both wondrous and tragic, and their reactions are exceptionally human. "e;Miner deftly transports her characters and the reader across myriad emotional, political, and geographical terrains, leaving us breathless. A marvel of a collection."e; Patricia Powell, author of The Pagoda

"Here comes a walking fire," the Fool says to Lear as he sees Gloucester walking across a heath carrying a torch. This novel opens in fall, 1988, as Cora, an anti-war activist, returns to the U.S. from Canada where she has lived for twenty years. A college student in the mid-sixties, Cora becomes politically curious, then joins the anti-war movement. Based on King Lear and written from the point of view of Cordelia, the book weighs definitions of patriotism and loyalty. In her return as in her past, Cora is testing borders between suffering and virtue, idealism and commitment, self and family, and exploring possibilities of change.