Vickie Vértiz
Vickie Vértiz is a writer and educator from Bell Gardens. Her writing can be found in the New York Times magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the San Francisco Chronicle.
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, Austin, and the University of California Riverside, she teaches in the Writing Program at UC-Santa Barbara. Follow her work at vickievertiz.com.
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Before becoming a state Assemblymember representing the areas of Southeast L.A., she had believed that success meant living somewhere better than her hometown of Bell Gardens.
The home-grown chain of Mexican seafood restaurants was founded by the Ortiz family in Bell Gardens, two blocks from our family home.
The first-ever Southeast L.A. Art Walk in Bell redefined the community as a destination for arts and culture, rather than a place people drive by.
More people are turning to self-provisioning in ways they had not considered before, signaling a need to reconnect with this part of our lives
A nuanced and rich history of urban Native Americans can be found in Bell Gardens, where pow wows provided a gathering place for the community.
One thing not as easily seen in South East L.A. cities like Bell, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Maywood, and South Gate is that they are brimming with artists.