Valerie Ann Leff is the author of the novel-in-stories, Better Homes and Husbands, published by St. Martin’s Press and optioned by NBC-Universal. She has published her stories in journals and magazines such as The Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, Lilith, The Seattle Review, Southwest Review, The Sun, and many others. She was certified in the Amherst Writers & Artists teaching method by Pat Schneider and Pat’s group of Chicopee housing project writers in 1995, and over the past 28 years Valerie has developed her own teaching style. She is co-founder of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville. She began running workshops at Westport Writers’ in 2013, and later the same year, she purchased the struggling private business and founded Westport Writers’ Workshop as a non-profit, independent literary center. Valerie served as first Executive Director of the new non-profit from 2013-2017 and sat on the board of the organization until 2020. With her mother, Juanita Leff, she co-founded the WWW Outreach Program.  She is thrilled to return to teaching at WWW.