Vanessa Manko

Vanessa Manko is the author of The Invention of Exile, which was a finalist for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a Kirkus Reviews’ best books of 2014. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review’s The Daily, NPR’s Selected Shorts and in Dance Magazine, Dance Now, Dance Teacher, Pointe and Dance Research Journal. Formerly the Dance Editor of The Brooklyn Rail, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College where she was the recipient of a Hertog Fellowship, working with Salman Rushdie as his research assistant. She also earned an MA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, focusing on dance studies and writing. Vanessa trained in ballet at the North Carolina School of the Arts and danced with the Charleston Ballet Theatre and she has taught writing at Wesleyan University, NYU and SUNY Purchase. A former Yaddo Fellow, Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow, and Fellow at the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, Vanessa also teaches writing at NYU’s Gallatin School and in the NYU Prison Education Program.