José Vadi is an award-winning essayist, poet, playwright and film producer. He is the author of the nonfiction books Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens (2024) and Inter State: Essays from California (2021). His short fiction appears in the anthology Sacramento Noir (2025). His work has been featured by the Paris Review, The Atlantic, the PBS NewsHour, KQED, Free Skate Magazine, Quartersnacks, Alta Journal, McSweeney’s and the Yale Review. He is also a cofounder of the photography zine project, Discantbelife Press (DCBL).
Originally from Pomona, California, José moved to Berkeley for college and quickly immersed himself within the Bay Area’s literary and performing arts communities, before relocating to Sacramento in 2021. As a teenager, José was a two-time National Poetry Slam champion, José has coached several college and youth slam poetry teams to national competitions, including the 2008 and 2010 Bay Area Youth Speaks teams featured in the HBO documentary series, Brave New Voices. He was the recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Shenson Performing Arts Award for his debut play, “a eulogy for three”, produced at Intersection for the Arts under the curation of Marc Bamuthi-Joseph’s Living Word Festival. José served as the editor and curriculum developer of The Bigger Picture, an anti-diabetes multimedia campaign sponsored by UC San Francisco’s Center for Vulnerable Populations. He was the inaugural project director of the Off/Page Project, a collaboration between The Center for Investigative Reporting and Youth Speaks, and is a co-producer of the short documentary film, Broken City Poets, detailing the city of Stockton’s bankruptcy through the poetry of its youth.
José Vadi 
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