Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buzzfeed, Epiphany, Apogee, Sporklet, PBS Newshour, Poor Claudia, Waxwing, The Wanderer, DIAGRAM, The Feminist Wire, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and others. She has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project and is a CantoMundo Fellow. She is the author of BEAST MERIDIAN from Noemi Press (2017). She currently teaches in Los Angeles, CA, but her hometown is Houston, Texas.