Valerie Martin

Valerie Martin (born 1948, Missouri) is an American novelist and short story writer. She has also taught at Mount Holyoke College, Loyola University New Orleans, The University of New Orleans, The University of Alabama, and Sarah Lawrence College, among other institutions. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has one child, Adrienne, born in 1975.

Her novel, Property (2003) won the prestigious Orange Prize. Her other works include Set in Motion (1978), Alexandra (1979), A Recent Martyr (1987), The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories (1988), The Great Divorce (1993), Italian Fever (1999), and The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories (2006), as well as Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis (2001), a biography of St. Francis of Assisi. Her most recent novel, Trespass, was published in 2007.

Her 1990 novel, Mary Reilly, a retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the point of view of a servant in the doctor's house, was released in 1996 as the Columbia TriStar Pictures film, Mary Reilly. It is directed by Stephen Frears and stars John Malkovich as Dr. Jekyll and Julia Roberts as Mary.

The short subject film Surface Calm (2001) is based on her short story of the same title from her first book, Love (1977).

Works

Novels

• Set in Motion (1978)
• Alexandra (1979)
• A Recent Martyr (1987)
• Mary Reilly (1990)
• The Great Divorce (1993)
• Italian Fever (1999)
• Property (2003)
• Trespass (2007)
• The Confessions of Edward Day (forthcoming 2009)

Collections

• Love: Short Stories (1976)
• The Consolation of Nature, and Other Stories (1988)
• The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories (2006)

Non-fiction

• Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis (2001)

Awards

• World Fantasy Best Novel nominee (1991) : Mary Reilly
• Nebula Best Novel nominee (1991) : Mary Reilly
• Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction Best Novel winner (2003) : Property

External links

• Audio recording of Valerie Martin reading from Property at the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar
• Valerie Martin at IMDb
• 1990 audio interview of Valerie Martin at Wired for Books.org by Don Swaim