has been active in British Filkdom since the mid 1980s.
She has always been instrumental in sharing filk, encouraging others to actively participate, making it known to newcomers, and introducing them to filk classics such as Banned From Argo. In 1996, at Obliter-8 she ran a one-off program item of multi-part harmony arrangements, not realizing that she was founding a choir, the n’Early Music Consort. She co-leads it with Rhodri James and supplies many of its arrangements, an art in itself.
In the early 1990’s she was the only British filker who travelled to European science fiction cons outside the British Isles, and was the first to present filk there. She also has run harmony and choir workshops at many FilkContinentals with great success. These enabled a lot of timid filkers who were too shy to go “up on stage” on their own, to try their voice at singing.
She has been involved in organizing programming at UK and organising program items at German cons and on at least one con committee. She has been to all British and German filk conventions.
She is warm and friendly, a calm presence in a circle, never hogging time, but always willing and able to participate with something fitting, whatever the mood may be or to change it if need be. She sings and plays her own songs as well as others, and knows a wide range of material. Valerie has a tape, “Lady in Veils”, and has written many songs, some of them considered “classics” in British Filkfandom, (Blue Flame, Morningstar, and others). She participated in the first Phoenix tape, which was done as a fund raiser to bring a guest over to the first Filkcon. She also assisted Zander Nyrond with his first tape project. Furthermore, she is a member of the British filk group “Cosmic Trifle” (formerly known as Just Plain Folk) together with Zander Nyrond and Chris O’Shea. Their interesting diverse band arrangements of filk songs found a lot of friends. Recently she also started to write some filk songs in German, a wonderful way of showing her appreciation of the international community.
For these contributions to filk music and the filk community, Valerie Housden is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame this twenty-seventh day of March, two thousand and four.