Vanessa German is an artist based in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Pioneering her own performance style she defines as “spoken word opera,” a hybrid of spoken word poetry, story telling, audience interaction and movement. She has written, performed and toured several evening length productions, including, “Root” which was developed when German was an August Wilson Center Fellow. Her work has been featured in The Georgia Review, Bullets to Bells and she was awarded the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a 2018 United States Artist Fellow.