Love

Valerie Martin, an American novelist and short story writer, was born in Sedalia, Missouri in 1948, but spent most of her childhood and young adult life in New Orleans. She attended the University of New Orleans and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she received an MFA in Creative Writing. Ms. Martin has taught at the University of New Orleans, New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Mt. Holyoke College.

• Love -- Surface calm -- Messengers -- The mechanics of it -- Contraction -- Transposing -- The creator has a master plan.

Ms. Martin's trademarks: a preoccupation with the dark underside of life, a taste for disturbing, even macabre imagery . . . excursions into an unseen realm [of] strange and magical events. . . . Martin possesses a sure storytelling gift, [an] ability to transform a myriad of specific details into larger, symbolic shapes." - New York Times