Vanessa Onwuemezi

Vanessa Onwuemezi (born in 1988 in London) is a writer and poet based in London, UK. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Birkbeck, 2018. Her story At the Heart of Things won the The White Review Short Story Prize 2019. She was a Showcase writer featured by the Literary Consultancy, UK, 2018, and has received a commendation for her flash fiction, The Crossing, from Bare Fiction magazine, 2017. She is interested in expanding the reach of the prose form through collaboration. She has produced the accompanying exhibition texts for artists Kira Freije, Mouthing the living, undetected, on breeze or breath, Soft Opening, London 2019; Alex Stone, INTERVENTION I, London 2018; Lauren Keeley, Lanes and Lanes, Frutta Gallery, London 2018.

During the residency Vanessa will prepare a book-length manuscript, a collection of experimental short stories currently titled Dark Neighbourhood. The stories in the collection are grounded in her wide-ranging interests: the rich history of Yoruba and Afro-Cuban religions, mythology and art; the visual arts; avant-garde and postmodern literature and poetry, as well as the reality bending narrative traditions of folk-tales.