Valerie Lawson

About the Artist

Valerie Lawson's work has been published in Café Review, About Place Journal, The Catch, Maine Farms, and others. Lawson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. She studied Electronic Publishing and Book Arts at the University of Maine in Machias. Lawson served on the board of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance from 2013-2015.

Valerie has worked as a bookseller, once worked as a security guard at a Rolls Royce show in Newport, coordinated a literacy program, organized poetry readings and writing groups in Massachusetts and Maine, co-hosted the Boston Poetry Slam, was invited as a Legacy Poet to the first Women of the World Poetry Slam, and participated in cultural exchanges with Ireland.

With her husband, Michael Brown, Lawson co-edited Off the Coast literary journal through Resolute Bear Press for eight years. In 2018, Lawson edited 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers published by Resolute Bear which went on to win the Maine Literary Award for anthology in 2018. Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot: Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us, a bilingual Passamaquoddy/English collection of stories edited by Wayne A. Newell and Robert M. Leavitt was released in 2021.