Vanessa Taylor

Vanessa Taylor

Philadelphia, PA

Introduction

  • Staff writer at Mic focusing on justice in all forms. Through news briefs, essays, and reported features, Vanessa covers politics, technology, and identity, particularly Black Muslim womanhood.
  • Founded NAZAR newsletter, an independent journalism project on surveillance in May 2020. Responsibilities include developing an editorial calendar, proofreading articles for content, length, and grammar, formatting newsletter, and online promotion.
  • As a News Writer at AfroTech, Vanessa developed a beat around artificial intelligence with a focus on facial recognition, surveillance, and the social impacts of technologies on Black communities.

Experience

Vanessa Taylor is a writer based out of Philadelphia focusing on social movements and technology / surveillance. Currently, she is a staff writer for Mic's Impact section and part of Dotdash Meredith's Anti-Bias Review Board. As a freelancer, Vanessa established her expertise in coverage of Black Muslim communities with articles in outlets such as Teen Vogue, The Intercept, and The New Republic.

Her essays and fiction have appeared in Catapult, as Editor’s Pick in Barren Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Drinking Gourd, a Black Muslim literary magazine, an Echoing Ida Cohort member, and Bitch Media's 2020 Writing Fellow in Technology. She is also the founder and curator of NAZAR newsletter, an independent journalism project on surveillance.

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