North Carolina A&T State University associate professor of English, Valerie Nieman is the winner of the 2012 Eric Hoffer Award for General Fiction for her novel, “Blood Clay.”

The Hoffer awards were established at the start of the 21st century in the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by “highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers.”

Born in western New York State, Nieman attended Jamestown Community College, and graduated with a journalism degree in 1978 from West Virginia University. She worked as a reporter and editor for West Virginia dailies before moving to Greensboro, N.C., to work for the News & Record. She returned to college to earn an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and joined the faculty of N.C. A&T.

“Blood Clay” is her third novel and fifth book. A story that readers say they “can’t put down,” a crime drama that reflects on home and community, and a lyrical look into the changing face of the New South – “Blood Clay” is all three. The story centers on Tracey Gaines, who has moved to rural Saul County, N.C., to escape the wreckage of a divorce. She devotes herself to teaching at an alternative school and renovating a farmhouse, but finds she can’t easily build connections in this new place. When she witnesses a tragedy, her insistence on truth-telling splits the community—but she finds an ally in a native son who left for new opportunities only to face his own trauma and a forced return home. Internationally acclaimed writer Jane Alison called it “both a tense, plot-driven story about complicated issues of race and guilt, and a meditation on solitude, history, and ways of living,”

In their citation, the Hoffer Award judges said: “Touching on themes of loneliness, belonging, and racism, this book will haunt the reader."  It was also selected to the short list for the Montaigne Medal, an allied award presented for a thought-provoking book. Other accolades have come from the American Book Review, which called it "a little…great American novel in story, character, and writing,” as well as Our State Magazine, Gently Read Literature, and numerous other reviewers.

Nieman is also the author of a collection of short stories, “Fidelities” and “Wake Wake Wake,” a poetry collection. She has received an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, the Greg Grummer Prize in Poetry, the Elizabeth Simpson Smith Prize in Fiction, and the Byron Herbert Reece Poetry Prize. A founding editor of Kestrel magazine, she is the poetry editor for Prime Number magazine and teaches at programs including the John C. Campbell Folk School. She is finishing another novel set in North Carolina and working on a new poetry collection.