Valley Haggard — 2016 Fascinating Person #8

They say those who can do, and those who can’t teach. They’re super wrong, by the way, because Valley Haggard does both fascinatingly well.

February 18, 2016; 4:39 PM • by Susan Howson

Photo by birkancaghan.

Meet each of the Fascinating People we’ve invited to speak for eight minutes on whatever they want. It goes down on Wednesday, February 24th. Learn more here or just go ahead and snag some tickets. We have very, very few left!

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Try this sometime, ask someone if they know legendary local writer and former Style Weekly book editor Valley Haggard. If they do, they will almost certainly say, “She is the BEST.” She is, and we keep bothering her about writing something for us, but she’s deep into creative stuff now. After founding Richmond Young Writers in 2009, serving on the board of James River Writers between 2008 and 2011, and creating her own site/movement/newsletter/exercise/wonderment Life in 10 Minutes, she realized she had enough advice and insight about writing to fill a book.

So she published that book!

The Halfway House for Writers taught Valley about self-publishing, but it also taught her that, to her surprise, her ability to be candid about her own wounds (and wounds she inflicted on others) could be inspiring to writers both new and old.

You can buy the book from Chop Suey in Carytown before the event, and mayhaps Valley will sign it for you. What we do know is that the reading she has promised to do will make you feel, laugh, and or make a note to go home and start writing your own memoirs ASAP.

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Read all the stories that feature our 2016 Fascinating People!