Valerie Ettenhofer

• A major "Avatar: The Last Airbender" fan since 2005, Valerie has previously ranked every episode of the series and even has a tattoo of the four element symbols.
• Valerie wrote an essay about the Nicolas Cage drama "Pig" – her favorite movie of 2021 – that appears in the 2023 Simon & Schuster anthology "Sad Happens."
• Valerie has previously served on the Critics Choice Awards TV comedy nominating committee, where she was thrilled to help highlight breakout performances from great shows like "Reservation Dogs" and "Abbott Elementary."

Experience

Valerie has been working professionally as an entertainment journalist since 2012, when she began freelance writing for her local college newspaper and quickly rose through the ranks to become editor-in-chief. After college, Valerie interned at the historic Roxie Theater in San Francisco, writing copy for their website and falling even more in love with film in the process. Since then, her work has appeared in print in the East Bay Express, as well as on websites like The Playlist, IGN, Dread Central, IndieReader, Movie Mezzanine, and more. Valerie is a voting member of the Critics Choice Association's TV and Documentary branches and the LGBTQ+ critics' circle, GALECA. For several years, she served as the head TV critic at Film School Rejects. She also publishes a weekly pop culture newsletter titled "Hey, What Are You Watching?"

Education

Valerie graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Saint Mary's College of California, where she studied English. Her film-heavy education allowed her to study special topics in pop culture, including independent film and the works of Alfred Hitchcock.