His manuscript The Guide to Imaginary Monuments was selected by Orlando Ricardo Menes for the 2012 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize[3][unreliable source?]

[2] His work has appeared in The American Prospect, Foreign Policy in Focus, ''Poet Lore, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Delaware Poetry Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Konch, and Red Wheelbarrow.

[6] Vera is the co-editor, with ire'ne lara silva, of an essay anthology about Gloria Anzaldúa, Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, (Aunt Lute Books, 2016).

He founded Brookland Area Writers & Artists and serves on the boards of Split This Rock Poetry and Rainbow History Project.

I live in the Brookland neighborhood, and was fascinated to find out that Sterling Brown lived a few blocks from me and wanted to know more about him — that kind of started a progression of interest in writers, playwrights and poets and novelists who called Washington home.