This February 2023, the University of Notre Dame Press will publish Auto/Body by Vickie Vértiz. For a limited time, we are giving away SIGNED advance copies! Enter to win by filling out the form at the bottom of this post. This offer expires December 31st and is open to US residents only.
Can’t wait to start reading? Reviewers, bookstore employees, librarians, and other members of the book industry can request an e-galley through Edelweiss here. We encourage you to leave a review if you enjoyed the book.
“In this collection, Vértiz 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
From the greased-up engines of auto body shops to the innumerable points of light striking the dance floor of a queer nightclub, Auto/Body, winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, connects the vulnerability of the narrating queer body to the language of auto mechanics to reveal their shared decadence.
Behind the wheel of this book is an insistent, humorous voice whose experiences have lent themselves to a deep, intimate knowledge of survival, driven by the pursuit of joy and exalted pleasure. Raised in and near auto body shops, Vickie Vértiz remembers visiting them to elevate the family car to examine what’s underneath, to see what’s working and what’s not. The poetry in this book is also a body shop, but instead we take our bodies, identities, desires, and see what’s firing. In this shop we ask: What needs changing? How do our bodies transcend ways of being we have received so that we may become more ourselves?
“Vickie Vértiz’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