About Valerie Duff
Valerie Duff has held fellowships from the VCCA and Writers’ Room of Boston. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, POETRY, Ploughshares, The Common, Great River Review, and elsewhere. Her second book, Aquamarine, was published by Lily Poetry Review Press in October 2023.Her previous volume, To the New World (Salmon Poetry, 2010), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize from Queens University, Belfast.She is a writer working in Resource Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.She was poetry editor of Salamander Magazine for twelve years. She studied poetry at Boston University and Trinity College, Dublin.
Praise for Aquamarine
Aquamarine showcases the compelling arc — from the bare-bones to the blissful — of a maturing poetic vision.
—Michael Londra, The Arts FuseLife can toss and turn us…and if we are unclear on the destination, we feel confident in this poet’s hands that we are witness to some profound leg of the journey.
—Robbie Gamble, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse VoicesAquamarine is a psalm to the complexities of the human heart.
—Sherod Santos, author of Square Inch Hours (Norton)A precarious balance between physical and emotional existence—at times, harmonious; other times, discordant—resonates at the core of Valerie Duff’s new book, Aquamarine. —Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest (Carnegie Mellon)Valerie Duff reads "Folk Magic," published in The Common, Issue 7, April 2014.
Recent Work
POEMS:Image Journal (forthcoming, spring 2027)Great River Review Two Poems (September 2023)Vox Populi "Follow You Into" (January 2022)Poetry Daily "Lace Curtain You Drape over Every Mirror" (July 2020)BOOK REVIEWS:Review of Layli Long Soldier's We (Graywolf) and Beth Piatote's Distant Water (Milkweed). LA Review of Books, October 2026.Review of Elizabeth Metzger's The Going is Forever (Milkweed) and Andrea Werblin Reid's To See Yourself as You Vanish (Wesleyan Univ Press). On the Seawall, October 2026.The Interior of the Exterior: Review of Katie Peterson’s Fog and Smoke (FSG). Published in LA Review of Books, February 18, 2024.Best Barbarian, poems by Roger Reeves: Review of Roger Reeves’ Best Barbarian (W.W.Norton). Published in On the Seawall, May 18, 2022.The Body and the Butterfly: Review of Fady Joudah’s Tethered to Stars (Milkweed Editions). Published in LA Review of Books, January 20, 2022.Elizabeth Hardwick, A Literary Lioness Among Lions: Review of Cathy Curtis’s A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick (W.W. Norton). Published in The Boston Globe, November 18, 2021.
Contact
MANUSCRIPT CONSULTING:With thirty years of experience as an editor, Valerie is available as a manuscript consultant wearing the hat of a writing coach, a developmental editor, a copyeditor, and/or a proofreader.She has experience editing poetry and creative nonfiction manuscripts and has worked with a range of clients from high school students (as a creative writing instructor and writing coach for college essays) to emerging and established writers.Please contact her for details and pricing.