Born to working-class parents, Vasquez was raised in California's Central Valley.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University at Fresno and a Master of Fine Arts in English from the University of California, Irvine.
He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing for two years at Stanford University.
He is the author of At the Rainbow (University of New Mexico Press) winner of the James Duval Phelan Award and the chapbook, Braille for the Heart, (Momotombo Press, 2007).
After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties edited by Ray Gonzalez, American Religious Poetry: An Anthology Edited by Harold Bloom, The Atomic Bomb, Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age, California the Beautiful, The Geography of Home, Highway 99, How Much Earth, Literary Nevada: Writings from the Silver State, Piecework: 19 Fresno Poets, Proud Harvest, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California, and Writing Home: Award-Winning Literature from the New West.