I am a nostalgic poet living between Tijuana and San Diego. When I was only 12 years old, I realized writing was my purpose in life the day I won a writing contest. I haven’t stopped writing since then and my work is a testament of my growth not only as an artist but a human as well.

My work is inspired by magical realism, surrealist artists, inner child and community healing.

✹ Keep swiping for more ✹
or
if you need any help with writing!

I have been writing since the age of 10. When I was 12 I won a essay writing contest and realized writing was what I was meant to do for the rest of my life. I never stopped writing since and moved to San Francisco right after high school to pursue a career in writing.

Once in San Francisco, I attended SFSU and earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

During my time as a college student I was published in CANTO, Cipatli, Chevere, Bossy, Gentromancer, and Mala Yerba magazines.

In order to be able to afford living in one of the most expensive cities in the country, I decided to become a freelance writer on the side. In 2015 I begun providing writing services (copy editing, tutoring, guidance sessions) to friends, classmates and colleagues.

In 2018 I was honored to be the first winner of Lucha Libro and got the opportunity to publish my first poetry book, Girasol.

I am now in the process of self publishing my second book and continue to work as a freelance writer.

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*Copy editing
*Translation (ENG-SPA / SPA-ENG)
*Ghost Writing
*Poetry requests
*Workshops
*Event speaker

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TESTIMONIALS
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“Working with Vianney was a breeze! I gave her a pretty convoluted set of themes and topics to write about for a monologue in my film and she managed to somehow stitch it all together beautifully! I'm genuinely impressed with the amount of thought and emotion she put into the piece. It's really uplifting to see an incredibly talented Latina writer. "

-AQ
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“Vianney Casas has been my go to freelance writer for more than 6 years. I have relied on Vianney to help perfect my writing techniques in the past. She has the ability to work with your own writing style and elevate your work without changing your own tone of writing. Vianney has helped me in the past with SOP writing, content strategy, personal statements and college papers. I’ve worked with Vianney from brainstorming up to editing and even ghostwriting. She can help you with any stage in your writing project. Her work has never disappointed me in the past, I have received A’s on college papers thanks to her service and accepted into fellowships/scholarships with the statement of purpose papers she’s reviewed. For any writing service I always reach out to her because she has demonstrated to be trustworthy and reliable for any work.”

-AM

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“Vianney didn’t disappoint. Her writing skills are amazing and she really went in depth with my essay. I can tell she took her time, provided great details, and used her own knowledge. She went over the word count I needed, followed the rubric, and completed it before the deadline. One of the only people I trust with my writing. I promise you WILL NOT be disappointed! P.S: her prices are reasonable for such incredible work.”
-SA

✹ Pantarei Restaurant Review
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“On November 6th, I attended Pantarei Restaurant and Bar, located in Columbus Avenue, in search for some authentic, delizioso, Italian cuisine. Located in the heart of North Beach, the magically colorful, Florentine-esque Italian neighborhood of San Francisco, the restaurant has been a favorite destination for over 12 years, seeking to combine contemporary and traditional Roman cuisine. Almost all restaurants, coffee shops and boutiques in North Beach intend to maintain a traditional, elegant, Italian Renaissance style of the 14th century and a Baroque and Rococo- esque identity of the 15th and 17th centuries, however, Pantarei succeeds in standing out with its vibrant, contemporary colorful decor that brightens up the corner of Columbus and Stockton.

Perhaps a contemporary restaurant, decorated after contemporary culture rising and blooming in Mexican culture as of the past five years, would resemble that aesthetic created by Pantarei. In the contemporary neighborhoods, Mexico also seeks that simple, vibrant inspiration which caters mostly to the “hip” western inspired culture that exists and has recently began to boom in Mexico. If you search for the traditional, one will find that in Mexico, traditional means a Mexico before the French invasion, and North American influence and imperialism. A traditional Mexico exists not inside Renaissance but in the age of muralism, the beginning of the 18th century, the century of the Mexican Revolution. A traditional Mexico looks like a Diego Rivera mural and the garden of Frida Kahlo, a Mexico exploding in color, spice, indigenous and modern mestizo syncretism. Although the dishes I tried are dishes eaten commonly in Italian culture in Italian households and Italian restaurants, these are dishes I can not see myself eating everyday, as a part of my daily diet. Being raised in a certain culture, one gets used to the comfort of that culture. Pasta, Raviolis and Tiramisus are deliciously heaven sent, eating them felt like transforming into an angel flying across the roof of the Sistine Chapel, however, I would eventually miss the spices and the flavors that my mother uses with love and pride.

It is of extreme significance that one explores new horizons, observes new art, listens to new music, reads new books in different languages and tries new cuisines with different flavors and originalities. San Francisco allows one to travel to different countries across the world without even having to purchase a ticket or get out of the city, one must take advantage of that. It is also crucial that just as a monarch butterfly, one knows to always come back home, always remembering and honoring roots and homeland.”

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✹ Análisis de Ana Mendieta y su muerte

“Todo comienza como pintura surrealista de Frida Kahlo: El Suicidio de Dorothy Hale. Bajo un cielo color claro y pastel pero aun fúnebre y turbulento, se encuentra el cuerpo de Dorothy, en su vestido negro de terciopelo favorito, bañada en sangre, con ojos abiertos que observan al espectador. El cuerpo de Dorothy renace de la tiniebla, se levanta, y extiende los brazos. De la ventana se lanza la misma Ana Mendieta, aterrizando en los brazos de Dorothy. Ya en la cocina, espera Sylvia Plath con un suculento pastel dentro del horno. De la ventana observan Carl Andre, esposo de Mendieta, y Ted Hughes, esposo de Plath del brazo de Bernard Baruch, amigo de Hale, los tres quizá responsables, los tres arden entre las llamas. Los tres observan desde la ventana con un hastío repulsivo y como aquel que se tiene al ver a un fantasma. ¿Quién es realmente el que sufre más, el invitado al castigo eterno? ¿Será Ana Mendieta, quien vive eternamente dentro de cada pincel, cámara, y pluma feminista? ¿O será quizás un Carl Andre, un Ted Hughes, un Diego Rivera, víctima de una norma y maniobra creada en las eras de colonización, norma que ha sido causa de destrucción y guerra entre países y hombres? ¿Cuántos asesinatos más hasta que el hombre despierte de su sueño eterno y Borgiano y se de cuenta de que Adán ha nacido de la vagina de Lilith? ¿Cuántas muertes más hasta que el mundo se quede sin mujer, y el hombre deje de poder nacer? La mujer muere a golpes, homicidios por causa de fragilidad egocentrista. El hombre muere una muerte lenta a causa de su propia destrucción. En este juego macabro creado por una sociedad machista, la mujer ha sabido utilizar movimientos como el feminismo, el arte, el sexual y el cultural para desafiar la norma que la encadena. El hombre, tal y como Carl Andre, sigue cavando su propia tumba al seguir cayendo bajo las garras del patriarcado. Efectivamente, el hombre no está listo para la revolución sexual, artística, económica y sociopolítica de la mujer, tan difícil se le es lidiar con esto, que necesita exterminar y eliminar a su mayor amenaza: Una mujer mágica, revolucionaria, valiente, innovadora e invencible como Ana Mendieta.”

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✹ Un Desorden Minimalista de un Poeta Desolado
The Minimalist Mess of a Heartbroken Poet
“[Coffee Cups, Paper, Plants]
{Brown, White, Marble, Green}
Once in Mexico City, you get off the cab and walk straight to Cafe Toscano, el Italiano, and you sit alone, in a table facing Parque Rio de Janeiro. There is a statue in the middle, resembling David from Florencia. A white marble sculpture of a man whose naked body means art. He is, in fact, a man. But Venus is art. Olympia is art. To not point the obvious, you refrain from asking the question burning your tongue. What if their bodies were brown? The trees move with the wind. The trees become brown bodies and you become a tree.
En Centro Histórico, it begins to rain. Gold cathedrals turn brown with each raindrop. You enter the coffee shop with the white marble floors, reminds you of the Louvre. Afrodita stands in the Louvre, another white marble naked woman. “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” You sit next to the green plant, because you once read plants make people happy. You write in your journal, “A las 3:47 PM, no tienes ni puta idea de lo que es el amor.” You know what it means to be in love with a city, in love with the green plant next to you, in love with the way your cat breathes as he sleeps, in love with Une Femme est Une Femme by Jean-Luc Godard. Ana Karinna, the french protagonist of that french film had said we should boycott women who don’t cry, so you sit inside the coffee shop next to the plant and you cry because you have no idea what love means. The plant next to you weeps, you become the plant.
Once in Medellin, you arrive at the coffee shop at Parque Lineal Ciudad del Rio, the one outside El Museo de Arte Moderno. You sit at the bar, alone. The Amelie, tu filme frances favorito, soundtrack plays in the background. El café de Colombia es negro. In Medellin Colombia, folks walking inside Museo de Antioquia are black, watching them walk feels like watching an installation. “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” The art exposing guerrilleras, Pablo Escobar, la pobreza y corrupción, makes you want to start a revolution. In the French Film, Amelie likes to observe so you sit and observe. The black bodies of folks walking the streets of Medellin become roses growing outside Parque Lineal Ciudad del Rio.
You sit in Tijuana, a table outside Cafetería Girasol and you open the envelope. Inside lies the letter you’d been expecting for two years. The last time your father had spoken to you had been the day he said happy birthday on your Facebook wall 2014. Your hands are shaking and you wished you were back in Distrito Federal, back in Medellin, tomando café. Your eyes stumble upon the address the letter came from. You searched it on your phone and discover, your father’s in jail. Next to you sits a plant. You crumble the letter. The plant dies.

Tell me what love is. I don’t understand.”

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✹ Bellas Artes

¿Te acuerdas cuando Michaelangelo y Davinci viajaron a Distrito Federal para presentar sus obras y las filas se extendían por mil cuadras? Del cuello te caía la gota gorda de sudor Cabe recalcar que en ese entonces la gente imaginaba que Bellas Artes era un museo en Italia

Pause
Vámonos a Italia Open your eyes Estás en Italia

Uffizi Room

The room is red
Me habías contado mi amor que el rojo era tu color favorito entonces pinté el cuarto un color rojo con la sangre que dejaste en la cocina
You walk into the room
There are white naked bodies in paintings When was the last time your body felt like a painting without the weight of being brown?
Naked
you mimic
the pose of the women in the paintings
You become La Madonna sentada frente al río
te das cuenta en tu observación que te falta el niño Jesús junto a tu pecho
This is when you realize the room is red because you used the blood on the kitchen counter to paint the walls inside your legs between your legs and into the running water of the bathtub
So you remember
you remember
you remember
Y entonces
Te metes la mano por abajo between the legs through the black hair Your hand enters the open mouth of the resting tarántula where the small red butterfly that had been devoured
sleeps dead

Grab it
Take it out
What’s inside your fist?

Hold it next to your naked breast
You are
Madonna and the Child Filippo Lippi

Walk over to the tree in the center of the room and hang the red butterfly
Water it with tears until it becomes blood orange blood
When was the last time a tree became art without the weight de ser una bruja despiadada hija de Satanás?
Dance around the tree before the witch hunters see you
You are
Primavera Sandro Botticelli

The doctor had asked if you could go through this on your own You said I’ll be ok So you lay there in bed naked bleeding screaming as two angels covered your body in dirt
You are
Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli

Open your eyes

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✹ What the Water Gave Me
Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s painting

“Ay de mí llorona, llorona llevame al rio.
Tapame con tu rebozo llorona,
porque me muero de frio.”

El Agua
The day my father stood me up, I stood in front of the sea, wearing my favorite dress,
No va a llegar, el ya no te quiere.
Chavela Vargas I need you to hold my hand,
llora conmigo, Llorona.
The sea and I waited. Blue was the color of my skin as the tears began to cover every inch that he had soon forgotten was a part of him.
I wonder how it feels to cry inside a jail cell. My father sleeps in a cell close to the sea,
the same sea he stood me up at. Blue because I was sad. Blue because I was cold. Blue because bodies that die alone and forgotten turn blue.
At one point he slept in his car. One day he picked me up and the seat was wet.
“What happened here, pa?”. He looked at me con sus ojitos llenos de vergüenza.
No me quiso decir, but I knew, because he looked just like the sad man inside Van Gogh’s At Eternity’s Gate, that the sea had taken my father.
Blue was the color of the dress I wore one day as I climbed around his shoulder, on my seventh birthday.
Blue was a beautiful color until my I began dreaming of my father’s body blue,
alone, forgotten.

I loved a boy once who reminded me of my father.
The day he told me he didn’t love me anymore I cried inside a white bathtub,
and I let the water run, cover my blue body.
One day we took a bath together, but that was when he loved me.
I wonder if he ever takes baths and remembers the snow in New York turning our hands purple.
I had a pool in my old house and I wondered how many bodies had wished to swim under.
Blue is a beautiful color, but looking at Picasso’s art from his Blue period makes me cry.
Ay agua maldita, cuanto me has hecho llorar!

“Ay de mí llorona, llorona llévame al río.
Tapame con tu rebozo llorona,
porque me muero de frío.”

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✹ Jardín

Afuera de tu tina la Danza de los Viejitos
Four men dance around inside your bathroom wearing masks de viejitos rojos y amarillos
If you had traveled to Purepecha you would have know what this meant
It was then you should have known But you didn’t
I should have buried you
inside my sunflower pot
where bees die and roses rot
I should have turned all my tears into
gotitas magicas de amor para mis plantas
para ti
para mi
para mi padre
para mi hijo
para mi hija
para mi
What can I do
when the sunflower inside me
was hurting me
I felt like my body despised me
have you ever felt
the feeling
of yellow bees
and red worms
and green beatles
and blue butterflies
running inside you
eating your insides
as plants grow around you
like being trapped in a garden
full of purple plants
See I never killed a sunflower
I simply got rid of the seeds
before the sunflower killed me
before the water inside the vase
on your table turned red making you wish you had listened to that Danza de Viejitos afuera de la tina cuando bailaban y afuera meteoritos destrozaban lo último que quedaba del amor

Piece by Jocelyn Salazar
“For as long as we can remember, marketing for Valentine’s Day has focused on targeting couples and romantic relationships. Companies heavily relied on messages that incited customers to buy products that would benefit their dates or romantic endeavours for the occasion. However, times are changing both for brands and their customers. Cue the revolutionary concept of “self care”—doing things for yourself to maintain and improve personal health and well-being. Beauty brands such as Fenty Beauty, Covergirl and Too Faced have embraced promoting the concept of self-care, and what better holiday to promote it on than Valentine’s Day? A day that generated $27.4 billion in the U.S. last year, with the average spending per person increasing by 21.2% YoY.
2020 became the year of self love and empowerment. Products like at-home hair care, nail kits, and cozy leisurewear were suddenly staples in consumer lives. According to Shopify, the top 3 trending products to sell in 2020 were peel-off face masks, nail polish and exercise bands (yes, in that order!) All of these products hold the purpose of maintaining one's holistic well being, and what better way to continue promoting this than through beauty products?! The ideal items to represent self-empowerment.
Promoting self-care on Valentine’s Day can be as simple as this.
Changing your message from:
“Have you tried our new lipstick? Perfect for tonight's romantic date! ”
To
“Step 1: Apply our newest lipstick
Step 2: Look good and feel good
Step 3: Take yourself out on a date and enjoy the best Valentine Day!”
Now, we are not saying to stop promoting your products as gifts for loved ones—52% of spending on Valentine’s Day still goes to partners. But the promotion of self-love brings a great new opportunity to be inclusive and reach the other half of consumers in the market! Perhaps someone wants to treat themselves on Valentine’s Day and is looking for a brand that can contribute to their self-improvement. One social media post can make the difference.
Self-care has proven to be more than a trend. It ties into a consumer’s desire to improve their well-being and find products that can help achieve that. How is your brand creating that experience for them on a high profit holiday?”
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✹ My edits/comments:

“Instead of ‘The perfect lipstick for your unique makeup look’, try something like

Step one: apply our newest lipstick
Step two: take yourself out on a date
Step three: enjoy the best Valentine Day of your life!

or

Nothing more romantic than finding the ideal lipstick combo and falling in love with yourself.”

“Maybe you can add a statistic of the amount of people that spend valentines day alone/single? I think that can give a clearer insight for brands so they can realize that's a niche they need to care about.”

“I dont know if you can do that for the page you are posting this at but maybe you can add some examples of Valentines Day Marketing from the brands you mention ? To show what they’re doing during this day.”