Auto/Body

Vickie Vertiz is an award-winning Mexican American poet, writer, and professor whose work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut won the 2018 PEN America literary prize in poetry. A graduate of Williams College, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California, Riverside, she teaches in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara.

Acknowledgements Alternator Distributor Transmission Notes

"The title of Vickie Vertiz's latest poetry collection, Auto/Body, suggests the inner workings of cars, but its focus has to do with the harnessing and distribution of power, personally and societally. Sometimes fueled by rage, sometimes by desire, this power serves as the driving force behind this collection." -ZYZZYVA: A San Francisco Journal of Arts & Letters "Auto/Body by Vickie Vertiz draws on the ostentatious beauty and raw power of Los Angeles car culture to interrogate constructions of gender and family dynamics within a Latinx context." -Harriet Books "Vickie Vertiz's voice sings out like a trumpet on a battlefield. She writes with a pen so determined it could win a war. Her poems make even the most foreign parts of the world feel known and personal. What a way to ascend and take us with her." -Darrel Alejandro Holnes, author of Stepmotherland "In this collection, Vertiz asks the necessary questions, invites us to give our thanks and not our judgement and shows us that the way forward is through the memories we live out daily." -Raquel Salas Rivera, former poet laureate of Philadelphia "The fierceness in Auto/Body does not relent, whether in its crisp memory-capture or in its attention to legacy, to present, to future in its constant ache and rift of loveliness and tumult. With undeniable power and lush clarity, Vickie Vertiz writes a path for readers to follow even when 'there's nowhere to go,' even when 'the world keeps ending,' writing with 'a love which implores all of us to act & walk the fractures.'" -Khadijah Queen, author of I'm So Fine "Auto/Body by Vickie Vertiz is a rebellion against violence and colonization. 'Rights to land that was never / yours Now you dig your hands into teenage girls.' Her linguistic virtuosity challenges, cajoles, and questions repressive attitudes. She playfully engages metaphor, paradox, and satire. Vertiz is a bold, strong voice. 'I'm not afraid. In this sparkle, in the middle of all of us, I am / not afraid to burn down this and every song.'" -Sheryl Luna, author of Magnificent Errors