Valerie Boyd (born December 11, 1963), is an American writer and academic, best known for her biography of Zora Neale Hurston Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston.
Boyd is currently an Associate Professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, where she teaches narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts and literary journalism.
Boyd obtained her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1985 and her MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in 1999.
She had previously taught creative nonfiction in the graduate writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.