Vanessa Veselka


Vanessa Veselka is an American writer best known for her 2012 PEN / Robert W. Bingham prize prize-winning debut novel Zazen. Her nonfiction has appeared in Salon, The Atlantic, GQ, Maximum Rock'n'Roll, Bitch Magazine, and The American Reader.
In 2013, she was a chosen as a MacDowell Fellow, and her November 2012 GQ piece entitled "" is part of the 2013 edition of Best American Essays.

Personal life

Veselka's bio says she has been "a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, and a student of paleontology." In the 1990s she played in the bands Bell and The Pinkos and ran a record label. She graduated from Reed College and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Writing

Veselka's novel Zazen was serialized online by Arthur Magazine, then published by Richard Nash's imprint Red Lemonade. The book grew out of a short story published by Tin House in 2010, and was nominated for a Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and awarded the $25,000 PEN/Bingham award "for a debut work of fiction that represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise."
Her nonfiction has dealt with issues of women, violence and the road as well as rape, mental health and unionization. Her fiction frequently involves "Buddhist concerns" and geological themes.
Her new novel, The Great Offshore Grounds will debut 25 August, 2020.