Vickie Vértiz
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
Vickie Vértiz is an award-winning poet, writer, educator, and advocate. The oldest child of an immigrant Mexican family, Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, California, a city in southeast Los Angeles County. With over 25 years of experience in social justice, writing, and education, Vértiz is an alumna of the Woodrow Wilson and Mellon Minority Undergraduate fellowships.
Her writing has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huizache magazine, Nepantla, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and KCET's "Departures" and Artbound.
Her work has also been featured in the anthologies Open the Door (McSweeney’s and the Poetry Foundation) and The Coiled Serpent (Tia Chucha Press), among many others.
Vértiz’s first full collection of poetry, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, published in the Camino del Sol Series at the University of Arizona Press, and it won a 2018 PEN America literary prize. Her newest poetry book is titled Auto/Body (University of Notre Dame Press).
She teaches creative writing, writing for Chicanx studies, writing for gender studies, summer bridge writing for Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) students, and composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
