ABOUT WREN VALENTINO

Wren Valentino is an educator, academic leader, and award-winning writer with more than twenty-five years of experience teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His career spans community colleges, universities, and low-residency graduate programs, where he has taught English, creative writing, humanities, public speaking, and theatre, mentoring students from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds.

Wren has held a range of faculty and leadership roles, including Associate Dean of Career and Technical Education (CTE), where he also served as a Perkins grant writer; Program Director and Lead Faculty Member for a collegiate Department of Theatre Arts and Dance; and adjunct faculty member in a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. He has also served as faculty at the community college level and was nationally selected as the Emerging Writing-in-Residence at Penn State Altoona. His commitment to inclusive, student-centered education has been recognized with a Diversity and Inclusion Service Award.

He currently serves as the Marketing Communications Analyst at Sacramento State’s College of Continuing Education (CCE), where he leads the college’s award-winning marketing team and supports initiatives that expand access to lifelong learning and workforce development.

In parallel with his academic career, Wren is the founding CEO of Blue Dasher Productions, a creative company dedicated to empowering writers and championing storytelling across publishing, film, and television. He is the bestselling author of twenty-one novels across romance, thriller, young adult, and horror, and has written more than seventy stage plays performed internationally, five poetry collections, and numerous screenplays, with multiple works adapted for film.

His writing has appeared in Atomic Flyswatter, The Best 10-Minute Plays, Disquiet Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, Powders Press, Regency Reflections, Wicked Gay Ways, and several Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. His scripts have placed in major competitions including the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, ISA Fast Track Fellowship, ScreenCraft Feature Competition, and the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards.

Wren holds a B.A. in Communications and English from Oglethorpe University (with honors), an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and completed UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting. He is a member of Romance Writers of America, which recognized him with a Volunteer Service Award.