Vanessa Croft holds a B.Ed in English Literature and an MA in English Language from the University of the West Indies. Her poetry has been published in Where I See The Sun: an Anthology of Anguillian poetry. She is a long-time winner in the Malliouhana Poetry Competition with first prize placings for Spoken Word from 2007 to 2018. In 2017, she represented the literary arts in Anguilla as a Spoken Word poet at CARIFESTA in Barbados. In 2018, Vanessa received the National Youth Award for Outstanding Performance in the Literary Arts. She was nominated at the same ceremony for Recognition in Volunteerism for her work teaching Literature to inmates at Her Majesty’s Prison. In 2019, Vanessa once again represented Anguilla at CARIFESTA in Trinidad. The Kweli Journal published Vanessa’s short story “Secret in the Mangoes” in April 2020. In that same year, Vanessa was recognized as a Women’s Week Honouree for her work as an activist and placed second in the Department of Youth & Culture’s non-fiction writing competition for her piece “The Dogs of Anguilla”.