Born in the former Soviet Union, Valerie Bandura's collection of poems, FREAK SHOW (Black Lawrence Press, 2013) was a 2014 Patterson Poetry Prize Finalist. She is also the author of HUMAN INTEREST (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, Beloit Poetry Review, Best New Poets, and others, and have received Pushcart Prize nominations. She teaches writing at Arizona State University where she lives with her husband, fiction writer Patrick Michael Finn, and their son.
