Vanishing Below the Waist

Winner of the Heartland Review Chapbook contest, finalist in the Wolfson Press Chapbook Competition & Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Contest, semi-finalist for Yellow Arrow Publishing’s Chapbook Contest, shortlisted for Galileo Press Chapbook contest, & longlisted for The Rachel Wetzseon Chapbook Award

“…a portrait of slow muting, of unfeeling and haunt. Each small vignette is a window into a life of macabre observation, quiet apathy, numbed survival and rage, dotted with moments of tenderness.”

-Kai Coggin, author of Mining for Stardust, Incandescent, and Wingspan

“With Vanishing Below the Waist, Ellie White eloquently gives voice to frequently silenced medical conditions that can be faced by people with vaginas, such as dyspareunia, vulvodynia, and endometrioma. Vanishing Below the Waist provides a brave and unflinching portrayal of living in a body that’s riddled with question. These poems defy patriarchally constructed notions of shame without ever feeling preachy or pedantic. With elegant lyricism and spellbinding imagery, White’s poems dazzle as much as they rage; they glitter and burn, sing pretty and haunt.”

-Stevie Edwards, author of Quiet Armor

Author Biography

Ellie White has been trying really hard since 1986. She holds an MFA from Old Dominion University. Her volume of work includes poetry, creative nonfiction, and the comic strip “Uterus & Ellie.” Ellie’s writing has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Breakwater Review, The Columbia Review, and many other journals. She has published two other poetry chapbooks, Requiem for a Doll (ELJ Publications, 2015) and Drift (dancing girl press, 2019), as well as a hybrid memoir, and for too long after (Unsolicited Press, 2019). Her work has won an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net nomination, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and was a finalist for the Meridian Short Prose Prize. She is currently a reader at Muzzle Magazine, where she has served on staff since 2016.