Valerie Frey is a native Georgian but has temporarily transplanted to Northern California for a few years. Her first home was Sapelo Island and she was raised in Athens.

She earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Art Education from the University of Georgia (1992 and 1995). Her master’s thesis, Folk Art in North Georgia: A Model Curriculum, wove together art, local history, and personal narratives.

She began her career in the field of Information Science by working at the Athens Regional Library (1994-1997). She left Athens in 1997 to pursue a master’s degree in Information Science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1999) where she concentrated historical research and archives. Her second thesis was entitled Personal Information Systems: Journals and Diaries as Process and Product.

After graduate school, she won a Junior Fellowship from the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress (1999) and then became Manuscripts Archivist at the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah and Archivist of the Savannah Jewish Archives (2000-2003). During that time, she co-authored two books focusing on historic photographs and oral histories: Images of America: The Jewish Community of Savannah (Charleston: Arcadia Press, 2002) and Voices of Savannah (Savannah: Savannah Jewish Archives, 2004).

In August of 2003, she became Education Coordinator of the Georgia Archives where she spent her time arranging for public services and creating resources for educators and their students. In November of 2007, she became full-time writer as well as a consultant and contract archivist. Her current project is a book that will be published in 2009 through the University of Georgia Press and supported the Georgia Humanities Council entitled Teacakes and Squirrel Mulligan: Preserving Family Recipes and Foodways. She credits her paternal grandparents with helping to spark her interests in history, storytelling, personal narratives, genealogy, and historical research.

Publications