She worked as a waitress and wrote Beat-inspired experimental poetry. In December 1962, she married the Peruvian painter in Israel and moved with him to Paris, where she collected money for street musicians and
modeled at the
École des Beaux-Arts. She also toured with a band called Tiamalu, performing in English and Spanish.
Teaching Vega taught in schools in English and Spanish through arts in education programs including
Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Poets in the Schools, Arts/Genesis, and
New York City Ballet, and beginning in the mid-1970s in prisons through Incisions/Arts, becoming its director in 1987, and later through the Bard Prison Initiative run by
Bard College. She served on the
PEN Prison Writing Committee. ==Later life and death==