In 1970 DeWitt Henry, a Harvard Ph.D. student, and Peter O'Malley, an Irish expatriate, joined together at the Plough and Stars pub to fill a void they felt existed in the literary scene in Boston.
He published his first story in English, "The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders" in Triquarterly in 1995, followed "The Sorge Spy Ring," also in Triquarterly in 1996 and "Islands" in Ploughshares in 1998, and eventually "Blind Jozef Pronek" in The New Yorker in 1999.
Formerly the arts & culture editor of the Forward newspaper, he has published in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Playboy, Ploughshares, North American Review, Partisan Review, Southern Review, et al.
Ploughshares was founded in 1976 by Ernie Regehr and Murray Thomson to promote peace by drawing attention to the increasing development and flow of weapons.
Vasquez's poetry has been published in various journals including The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Missouri Review, The New England Review, The Notre Dame Review, Parnassas: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares, VerseDaily.com, and The Village Voice.
The Swords and Ploughshares Museum is a private military museum located south of the village of Kars, Ontario.