Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of the collection Beast Meridian, a 2019 Whiting Award recipient, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for the Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work in Poetry has been recognized with a 2019 Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and has also appeared in the New York Times, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Rumpus, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Buzzfeed Reader, and elsewhere. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and is pursuing her doctorate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she is raising her son with the help of a loyal dog.
The poet’s Blood Meridian is kind of a nexus of a rich connection to the environment, mythology, and exploration of colonialism. She’ll be appearing at Word of South with the musician Larry Mitchell, sponsored by the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group.