Mike Valente is the recipient of the 2009 Nicholas Sparks Prize judged by Carole Maso. He spent the year working on a novel and collection of short stories.
He earned a BA in public policy from Stanford University and, before arriving in South Bend, lived in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, where he worked at an online brokerage, a consulting firm, and a wine cellarage and management firm. He received his MFA in creative writing at Notre Dame in 2009. He was a Sparks Summer Fellow in 2008 and spent ten weeks doing an internship with the Park Literary Agency.
His story “Wish” has been published in the online literary magazine Monkeybicycle.