Vanessa received her MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry from CUNY Brooklyn College. Her work has been published in Sixth Finch, VIDA, Word Riot, The Atlas Review, Brooklyn Poets , among other places.

She is the author of Images for Radical Politics, which was the Editor's Choice for the 2015 Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming in November 2016; and the chapbooks, midnight blue (Porkbelly Press, 2015) and Weekend Poems (dancing girl press, 2014).

She is currently teaching English and Creative Writing at Newark Academy in Livingston, NJ. She is from and lives in Brooklyn.