From the Stacks is a regular series on the Poetry Center Blog in which we solicit authors to wander our library and choose books that have been important to them and/or that they recommend.

Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in southeast Los Angeles and is our 2016 Summer Resident. Her writing can be found in The Volta, Huizache, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Offing, and Nepantla. Her latest collection of poetry was the runner up for the Andres Montoya book prize in 2016. A graduate of Williams College, U.T. Austin, and U.C. Riverside, Vértiz teaches creative writing all over the country and works with 826LA.

Vickie's selections From the Stacks are:

A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon by CAConrad

Troubling the Line: Trans & Genderqueer Poetry & Poetics edited by TCTolbert and Tim Trace Peterson

What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey

The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry edited by Francisco Aragón

The Taxidermist's Cut by Rajiv Mohabir

Off-Season City Pipe by Hedge Coke

How the End Begins by Cynthia Cruz

Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night by Morgan Parker

A Third Instance by Rosa Alcalá, Graig Watson, and Elizabeth Whitehead

The Lust of Unsentimental Waters by Rosa Alcalá

Undocumentaries by Rosa Alcalá

Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border by Juan Felipe Herrera

Sing by Hedge Coke

The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology edited by Nathalie Handal

The Poetics of Space  by Gaston Bachelard

The Complete Poems of Jean Genet by ManRoot Magazine

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

Night Sky With Exit Wounds  by Ocean Vuong

The Service Porch by Fred Moten