Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants and earned a doctorate from the University of Southern California. She is the author of the poetry collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017). Her prose work, Magical Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders (Tiny Reparations Press, 2024), was long-listed for National Book Award for Nonfiction. 

The recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award in Poetry and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series in October 2023. She lives in Los Angeles.