Valerie Nies is a comedian, writer, and gluten enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. 

She's written for humor sites McSweeney's and Reductress, and her sketches have been featured on Jezebel, Bitch, Salon, Huffington Post, and Grub Street. She’s won multiple screenplay awards for sitcom pilots and spec scripts that never aired. She's performed stand-up at the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival and the Big-Little Comedy Festival, and hosted the frequently sold out stand-up show Smile More in Austin, Texas for 4 years. She’s also taught a stand-up comedy class since 2017 through The Institution Theater, currently teaches in-person classes with Merlin Works, and offers comedy writing and coaching workshops.

Valerie is also a published poet with work appearing in Rattle, SOFTBLOW, Drunk Monkeys, Sand Hills Literary, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pine Hills Review, among many other outlets. Her chapbook, Imaginary Frenemies, was published in 2021 from Toho, and her full-length collection, Snacks for the Love Hungry, was published by World Stage Press in 2022.

She spends a good deal of her free time scanning WebMD and ridding her clothing of cat fur. 

Find her on the social places @valerieknees.