Vanessa Veselka is a writer and musician.Veselka's nonfiction has appeared in Salon, The Atlantic, GQ, Maximum Rock'n'Roll, Bitch Magazine, Smithsonian, The Atavist, and The American Reader, and has been included in Best American Essays and the anthology BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism.Veselka's first book, "Zazen," was published in 2011 and won the PEN / Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her second book, "The Great Offshore Grounds," was published in 2020 and won the Oregon Book Award.