Vanessa Veselka

Vanessa Veselka writes novels and essays that combine family conflict, economic pressure, travel, and the lives of people working beyond conventional centers of power. Her first novel, Zazen, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. The Great Offshore Grounds, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2020, follows half-sisters Livy and Cheyenne after an unexpected inheritance sends them across the United States and toward a complicated family past. The novel's broad geography includes Seattle, the Dakotas, the Gulf Coast, and offshore labor, but its emotional center remains the sisters' uneven bond and search for belonging. It was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. Veselka has also published essays and short fiction in major American periodicals. Her work draws energy from movement and competing viewpoints, allowing class, work, motherhood, and national mythology to emerge through character rather than abstract argument. The Great Offshore Grounds is her most expansive expression of that method.