Laura Valeri is the author of the short story collection The Kind of Things Saints Do, which won the John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award and of the University of Binghamton John Gardner Award.  Her works in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appear in Glimmer Train, Inkpot/Literary Potpourri, Big Bridge, Gulf Stream, SN Review, Soundzine, and Our Roots are Deep With Passion, an anthology of Italian American writers published by Creative Nonfiction. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.