About the Book

Betsy Fagin’s self-driving reimagines the American epic through the lens of a contemporary woman’s journey. 

Rooted in the tradition of the road trip narrative, Fagin’s poems interrogate the foundations of freedom, representation, and privilege while dismantling romanticized myths of Western expansion and the cis, white, male-dominated tales of the open road. Through sharp, playful, and incisive verse, Fagin celebrates Black, queer, feminist presence and futures, confronting the erasures and delusions in America’s frequently told stories.

Using images of the great American West and the highways that connect it, she charts a path through landscapes of disenfranchisement toward self-determination and agency. Throughout the collection, self-driving redefines freedom as both a state and a mindset. In a bold declaration, Fagin writes: “I knew my rights / were all the rights, my freedoms all the freedoms,” embodying a call for expansive liberation. This collection is a powerful exploration of identity, impermanence, and the boundless possibilities of reimagined narratives.

Praise for self-driving

Listed in Ms. Magazine‘s “Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2024 and 2025”

“Elevation, acceleration, presence.”
—Ms. Magazine

“The poems of self-driving are stunning with their combination of crackling language, plangent music, and sharp social critique. Feminist and humanist, the vision here is both passionate and compassionate. It’s a pageturner to be sure—I wanted to read it quickly and read it again—but the depths within each brief poem compels one to linger within to be known and transformed.”
—Kazim Ali, author of The Voice of Sheila Chandra

“self-driving is a beautiful exploration of the human experience, evocative and compelling.”
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Faith

“In self-driving, lyricism is precise, figurative speech is concrete, and image is how every being and location gets their say. With deep skill and compassion, Betsy Fagin gives us poems restoring sensory pleasure, playfulness, and grounding sensibility to reckon with the open road’s perpetual present. Here are landscapes and situations you might recall from your travels through the hyperreal now. Get in, reader, we’re falling in love with language again.”
—Kimberly Alidio, author of Teeter

Betsy Fagin is the author of self-driving (Autumn House Press), Fires Seen From Space (Winter Editions), All is Not Yet Lost (Belladonna), Names Disguised (Make Now Books), and a number of chapbooks. Her work has received support and awards from the American Library Association, Library Journal, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Provincetown Community Compact. Raised on […]

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