Vanessa Manko is the author of The Invention of Exile. She earned her MFA from Hunter College where she was the recipient of a Hertog Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times Magazine, The Barnes & Noble Review, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She has taught writing at Wesleyan University, New York University, and SUNY Purchase. While at the Library, she worked on a novel in progress called A Question of Illumination, inspired by the life of Loïe Fuller, the late 19th-century modern dancer.

The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding. The Visiting Fellowship offer writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library.

The Visiting Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.