Valerie Bauerlein is a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She writes about small-town America and Southern politics, economics, and culture.

Bauerlein has covered the South her entire career, including 19 years at The Wall Street Journal and four years at The State in Columbia, South Carolina. Earlier in her career, she worked as a congressional correspondent for The (Raleigh) News & Observer. She is the author of The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty (Ballantine, 2024).

Bauerlein graduated from Duke University. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and their two children. Her sister, Lisa, is a Meredith College alumna from the Class of 1991.

Read more about Bauerlein and her connections to Meredith