Elsa Valmidiano

As founder and operator of The STETosphere, I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and am a law graduate of Syracuse Law.

I am the author of the lyrical essay collection, We Are No Longer Babaylan, from New Rivers Press, and am a recipient of their Editors’ Choice selection from their Many Voices Project Competition in Prose. My work appears in various literary journals such as Mud Season Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Anomaly, Cherry Tree, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, among many others. My work has also been widely anthologized by established presses such as Sundress Publications, University of Minnesota Press, and New Rivers Press.

On my website, Slicing Tomatoes, I curate a directory of Pinay visual artists and their work from the Philippines and the Diaspora, which I feature alongside my poetry and prose. There, you will also find my complete writing CV.

For almost twenty years, I worked as a litigation assistant and paralegal at prestigious law firms in the San Francisco Bay Area while continuing to work with seasoned editors since the publication of my own work first appeared in 2007. Since then, I served as Fiction Editor at a literary journal, judged a writing competition, and helped refine the manuscripts of literary colleagues.

I understand the valuable relationship that must be fostered between an author and editor. While attention to detail is a must for all editors, communication and transparency are also key in establishing a meaningful working relationship between author and editor, where the author is always respected while also taking into consideration the edits of the editor so that the manuscript reads clearly, concisely, and consistently without sacrificing the author’s vision.