Vanessa Veselka

Bio

Vanessa Veselka is the author of the novel Zazen, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and ZYZZYVA, and her nonfiction in GQ, The Atlantic, The Atavist, and was included in Best American Essays and Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex worker, a union organizer, a musician, a train hopper, a waitress, and a mother. She lives in Portland, OR. Her new novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, is out now from Knopf. It was recently long-listed for The National Book Award.