V.L. Czerny is a professor of English with a bachelor’s degree in English from Eckerd College, a master’s degree in English from the University of Arizona, and a doctorate in Comparative Studies with a Graduate Women’s Studies Certificate from Florida Atlantic University.

Besides teaching English at a community college, Val is a writer of fiction and poetry, a scholar, storyteller, and an avid reader and interpreter of classical children’s stories and fairy tales. She has recently written novellas and short stories for both adults and children with fictional plots placed in colonial and Gilded-Age America, in biblical settings, and in the world of caterpillars and butterflies. She is working on a novel for children and young adults that relates ten-year-old Penny’s adventure as she is recruited to maneuver into the dark dominion of the trees with the assistance of a fox, burrowing owl, dragonfly, alligator, bear, her own cat, and other animals on a heroine’s journey to upset the applecart in a restrictive world.

Val was recognized by John Hamant, the Director of the “Legends” storytelling program at Colonial Williamsburg, as the best female creative writer/embellisher and storyteller, has performed at local venues, libraries and schools, has traveled to Paris to present her interpretations about Mary Poppins at the conference of “Children’s Literature in the Interwar Period” at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, and has presented papers at conferences throughout America. With Jacqueline Nadel as the journal designer, Val created and edited the college journal, Essais, to highlight students’ critical thinking skills.

A few of her articles are: “Mary Poppins: L’Entre Guerres, Sojourneuse Consciente” in Strenæ; “A Return to the Wild in Anne of Green Gables” in The Lion and the Unicorn; “‛Bang!—Just Like a Candle!’: Extinguishing Angels with Vaporous, Carrollian Glass” in the Journal of the Georgia Philological Association; “Monarch of All I Can Sway: ‘Crusoeing’ Alongside Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Decay of Lying’” in Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal; and, about Beatrix Potter, “Constrained by Performance: Women Write the Wild” in Women and Language.