Valerie Hughes (she/her) is a writer from New York. Her fiction has been published in numerous literary magazines such as SmokeLong Quarterly and HAD. She was a finalist in SmokeLong Quarterly's Grand Micro Fiction contest in 2025. Her flash fiction was a runner-up in Peatsmoke’s Summer 2026 Editor’s Prize Contest. She is an alum of PocketMFA, One Story’s Advanced Fiction Workshop, and Granta’s Writing Literary Short Fiction Workshop.  She is currently working on a novel (sometimes two).