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Anne Valente

Biography

Anne Valente

Anne Valente is the author of the story collection BY LIGHT WE KNEW OUR NAMES, which won the Dzanc Books Short Story Prize, and the fiction chapbook AN ELEGY FOR MATHEMATICS. Her work has appeared literary journals, including in One Story, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review; Best American Non-Required Reading 2011, and The Believer and the Washington Post. She teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Anne Valente

Books by Anne Valente

by Anne Valente - Fiction, Women's Fiction

When Billie is released from a correctional facility in Decatur, her sister Rhiannon is there to meet her. Painful secrets and numerous unspoken betrayals linger between them --- but most agonizing is the sudden passing of their mother, a renowned paleontologist. Rhiannon and Billie must overcome their differences as they set off on a road trip west, following the breadcrumb-trail of their late mother’s scavenger hunt, a sort of second funeral she planned in her final days. The sisters know the trail will end in Utah at the famous Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, where their mother spent her career researching dinosaur fossils. But the seemingly endless days on the road soon take their toll, forcing Rhiannon and Billie to confront their hostilities and revisit old memories --- both good and bad.

by Anne Valente - Fiction

As members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola, Matt and Christina are eager to capture all the memorable moments of their junior year at Lewis and Clark High School. But how do you document a horrific tragedy --- a deadly school shooting by a classmate? Struggling to comprehend this cataclysmic event, these four survivors vow to honor the memories of those lost and the memories forgotten in the shadow of violence. But the shooting is only the first inexplicable trauma to rock their small suburban St. Louis town. A series of mysterious house fires have hit the families of the victims one by one, pushing the grieving town to the edge.