My Publications

Chapbooks

Sprawl: Tales of Suburbia by Valerie Lute

Choose a spiral off the expressway, any one will do, into the land where neighborhoods bear names of the topography they replaced…Enter the Sprawl. In these four stories, we meet young people seeking connection and meaning within impersonal landscapes rampant with social inequality and alienation.

24 pages, contains four short stories: “Sprawl,” “Being Here,” “The Storm” and “Tough Guy.”

Illuminations: Fantasy Stories by Valerie Lute

Enter the mirror world: whales grow feet and walk into Target, monks without heads perform bizarre rituals, and lovers are trapped in a prison of their own making. In each strange tale, we learn a little bit about our own world.

24 pages, contains two short stories and two prose poems: “A Natural History of Headless Society,” “Singing of Migration,” “Disjoined by Neptune’s Might,” and “Illuminations.”

Fiction

  • “Until Only the Light Remains,” Arts & Letters: Autumn 2019 (buy the issue)
  • “A Natural History of Headless Society,” Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2019 (buy the issue)
  • “Disjoined by Neptune’s Might,” Liquid Imagination: February 2019 (read online)
  • “Smoke,” Southword Journal: July 2018 (buy the issue)
  • “Sprawl,” Literary Orphans: July 2018 (read online)
  • “Punk Serenade,” Dogzplot Flash Fiction: July 2018 (read online)
  • “The Blue of the Sky, the White of the Waves,” Everyday Fiction: February 2018 (read online)
  • “Alone in this Fair Garden,” The Copperfield Review: Summer 2015 (read online)
  • “The Storm,” Main Street Rag: Summer 2015 (buy the issue)
  • “Ye Sons of Toil,” Everyday Fiction: June 2014 (read online)
  • “Being Here,” The Rusty Nail: June 2013 (buy the issue)
  • “Tough Guy,” Prime Number Magazine: November 2012 (read online)

Creative Nonfiction

  • “Drowning in Books,” 805 Lit: July 2021 (read online)
  • “Temple and Resort,” Secret Destinations: Chatham MFA Field Seminar Writing 2003-2018
  • “The Idea of Birds,” Contrary Magazine: Winter 2019 (read online)

Poetry

  • Two Prose Poems, Pensive Journal: October 2021 (read online)
  • “A Season Past Hell,” Coffin Bell: Fall 2018 (read online)
  • “Cinderella’s Brother,” The Good Men Project: March 2014 (read online)
  • Three Poems, The SN Review: Summer 2009

Humor

  • “Mice Review My Kitchen from Grad School,” Points in Case: January 2022 (read online)
  • “Styling Advice for Every Hair Type Written by Demons,” The Higgs Weldon: March 2018
  • “Budgeting Tips from the 1%,” Defenestration: September 2016 (read online)