Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist working as a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and journalist. She is currently a consultant for Dora the Explorer (Reboot), has written for Sesame Street and was a Sesame Street Writers Room Fellow. She’s also written for the animated preschool show Caillou.
 
Her debut novel, White Light, was published in 2015, to critical acclaim. Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, Al Dia, Flavorwire, and numerous other publications and institutions, it also won an International Latino Book Award.
 
Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. These include the immersive hit, Amparo(“Miami’s Hottest Ticket,” according to People en Español); The Cuban Spring (a full-length Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015), The Crocodile’s Bite (a short included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; the City Theatre Anthology 2015; and the Writer’s Digest Annual Award Anthology, 2015), and Freek!,a short play for Young Adults (anthologized in The Applause Acting Series’ 5 Minute Plays For Teens).
 
As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Narrative.ly, and American Theatre Magazine, among numerous other publications. She’s also a Huffington Post blogger. 
 
She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History).  
Her newly commissioned and autobiographical radio play, Ich Bin Ein Berliner about the fall of the Berlin Wall and her relationship to Cuba premiers in April of 2021.