Current Projects
BRIEF BLACK CANDLES
A beautiful and heart-wrenching collection of poetry you won't want to miss.
Brought to you by Not a Pipe Publishing,
available for purchase through your
local independent bookshop or on Amazon.
Signed copies available from King's Books!
Click here to watch a video of the
Book Launch Party!
Join Lydia for a conversation about the collection
hosted by her daughter here!
“Valentine weaves a text that is rich in sensory, place and imagery. … She demands answers, calling them, you, and us to walk through the museums of our minds, reckon with our ghosts, embrace our angels, and be our own crooked superheroes.”
Poet Laureate for the city of Tacoma 2017-2019
author of The Art of Naming My Pain
AliQuippa follows three generations of Black women in Aliquippa, PA, a former booming steel town just north of Pittsburgh. Isaac, the family's prodigal son, cannot extricate himself from history, and the Lockwood legacy of tragedy repeats itself in the era of Travon Martin and Tamir Rice. While the ghosts of those young men and all the others in recent history walk through the play, the elements of daily life always serve to illustrate something bigger at work that is beyond anything the women can control as they struggle mainly to forgive the world for all the damage it has done to them.
Stay tuned for a
Zoom performance Summer 2021!
A play set in the year 2095 (50 years after the eradication of COVID-19) which explores the legacy of both the pandemic and systemic racism, inequity, and injustice.