Agent: Joy Harris

Valerie Boyd, the author of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (Scribner 2003) and Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker 1965-2000, which she edited (and was published by Simon & Schuster on April 12, 2022), died on February 12, 2022. She was at work on an anthology titled Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, which released in 2022 from Lookout Books at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

She was an Associate Professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia, where she taught magazine writing, arts reviewing and narrative nonfiction. She also has taught creative nonfiction in the graduate writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles and was a consultant to The Zora Neale Hurston Trust.

Valerie earned a bachelor’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1985 and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College in 1999.

An accomplished journalist and cultural critic, Valerie is the former arts editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and she has been published in numerous anthologies, magazines and newspapers. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, Ms. magazine, Paste, The Oxford American, Book magazine, Essence, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Creative Nonfiction, African American Review, The Scholar and Feminist Online and other publications.

She founded EightRock, a cutting-edge journal of black arts and culture, in 1990. In 1992, she co-founded HealthQuest, the first nationally distributed magazine focusing on African-American health.

Wrapped in Rainbows—the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in 25 years—was published to wide critical acclaim. It was hailed by Alice Walker as “magnificent” and “extraordinary”; by The Washington Post as “definitive”; by The Boston Globe as “elegant and exhilarating”; and by The Denver Post as “a rich, rich read.”

For her work on Wrapped in Rainbows, Valerie received the Georgia Author of the Year Award in nonfiction as well as an American Library Association Notable Book Award. The Georgia Center for the Book named Wrapped in Rainbows one of the “25 Books That All Georgians Should Read,” and the Southern Book Critics Circle honored it with the 2003 Southern Book Award for best nonfiction of the year.

“Valerie Boyd was one of the best people ever to live, which she did as a free being. Even though illness was stalking her the past several years, she accompanied me in gathering, transcribing, and editing my journals Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, and stood with me until the end, though she will be with us in spirit only for publication on April 12th, two months after her passing. This was a major feat, a huge act of love and solidarity, of sisterhood, of soul generosity and shared joy, for which she will be remembered; as she will be remembered with immense gratitude for her extraordinary biography Wrapped in Rainbows of our revered and irrepressible Medicine Ancestor, Zora Neale Hurston.”- Alice Walker

“We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of Valerie Boyd,” said Dana Canedy, former Senior Vice President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster. “Boyd was a tremendous talent who touched so many with her generous spirit and deep commitment to storytelling. We regret that she didn’t live to see Gathering Blossoms Under Fire published and in the hands of readers, but we will honor her work, and her legacy will not be forgotten.”

She was a beloved friend, sister, aunt, educator and writer.