Vanessa McGrady is originally from New York's Upper West Side, the daughter of a writer father and a prima ballerina/artist mother. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her loveable beagly mutt, Lucy. She has worked slinging food and alcohol at fine and not-so-great establishments on the East and West Coasts. She has ridden in a helicopter with the president of the Navajo Nation during a snowstorm. She has crashed weddings in Indonesia and Ireland. She subsists mainly on baby organic greens, smoked salmon, olives, goat cheese and red wine. Oh, and chocolate, preferably dark and European. She is in a constant state of evolution and practices yoga (key word here is "practices"). Her earliest memory is of her parents bringing her brand-new brother home, and changing clothes three times because she wasn't sure what to wear for the baby. She's not that much different now. She's defended the First Amendment, her favorite, in print, and on television and radio. She's passable at singing Patsy Cline, and has recently mastered "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" and "I Will Survive" as her karaoke throwdown songs. She met one of her greatest influences, Cynthia Heimel, who signed her latest book, "To my actual daughter." That moved Vanessa to sweet, hot tears. She was chosen as Rose Hips Kween for the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Port Townsend, Washington. She's done stand-up comedy, written extensively about shopping, has very few cavities and, on December 31, 2001, walked away after a double-tractor-trailer semi truck smashed into her adorable red Mazda MX3. She keeps constant company of angels and works to make decisions based on love, not fear.
