Poet, essayist, and critic Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a doctorate in English literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California.
Villarreal is the author of the essay collection Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders (Tiny Reparations Books, 2024), a speculative memoir and criticism collection longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the poetry collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017), recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award nomination and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters.
Villarreal’s work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, Oxford American, The Paris Review, Poetry, the Best American Experimental Writing series, Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Art for Justice, and CantoMundo and has been recognized with a Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation.
Villarreal lives in Los Angeles with her son and a loyal dog. Find her on Twitter @Vanessid.
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More Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Text: Read poems by Villarreal at Academy of American Poets
Video: Villarreal's cento "Open Your Eyes" features in a film by Julia Jansch
Audio: Villarreal appears on The Feminist Present Podcast with Laura Goode