Her November 2012 GQ piece entitled "The Truck-Stop Killer" was included under the title "Highway of Lost Girls" in the 2013 edition of Best American Essays.[4]
Veselka's first novel Zazen was serialized online by Arthur Magazine,[7] then published by Richard Nash's imprint Red Lemonade.[8] The book grew out of a short story published by Tin House in 2010,[9] and was nominated for a Ken Kesey Award for Fiction[10] and awarded the $25,000 PEN/Bingham award "for a debut work of fiction that represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise."[11] Zazen was rereleased by Knopf in 2021.[12]
Her second novel, The Great Offshore Grounds[13] was released on August 25, 2020, from Knopf.[14]
Personal life
Veselka's bio says she has been "a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, and a student of paleontology."[15] In the 1990s she played in the bands Bell and The Pinkos and ran a record label.[16] She graduated from Reed College[17] and lives in Portland, Oregon.[18] She is the daughter of broadcaster Linda Ellerbee.[19]