About

Valerie O’Riordan is an Irish writer, based in the UK, where she lectures in Creative Writing and English at the University of Bolton. She received her MA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester, where she was supervised by Ian McGuire (The North Water, 2016; The Abstainer, 2020).

Her short fiction has won both the O. Henry Prize (2019) and the Bristol Short Story Prize (2010), been shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ Tom Gallon Trust Award (2018), and commended in both the Cúirt and Galley Beggar Prizes (2018). Her flash fiction was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize four times between 2010 and 2014. Her work has been published in the O. Henry Prize Anthology, as well as in Dostoyevsky Wannabe Cities: Manchester, Unthology, The Manchester Review, LitMag, The Lonely Crowd, MIR Online, Tin House (online), and Fugue, amongst other journals, anthologies, and websites. As an academic, she has published on the works of Jennifer Egan, David Vann and Ben Lerner.
 
She co-edits the literary book review site Bookmunch, and is senior editor at The Forge Literary Magazine.