People like Valerie Martin

Valerie Martin (née Metcalf; born March 14, 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer.

Her novel Property (2003) won the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2012, The Observer named Property as one of "The 10 best historical novels".

Martin was born in Sedalia, Missouri, to John Roger Metcalf and Valerie Fleischer Metcalf. Her father was a sea captain and her mother was a housewife whose family goes back several generations in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised in New Orleans from the age of three, attending public elementary school and a Catholic high school (Mount Carmel Academy). She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Orleans in 1970 and graduated from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1974. In the 1970s, Martin took a writing course at Loyola University New Orleans taught by Southern novelist Walker Percy.