“ Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz will change your life. Readers will find everything here: a gripping and necessary story, luminous writing and an utterly compelling heroine who is both generous and fierce. You will emerge changed, dazzled, energized, disbelieving and yet a believer. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher 15 years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power teenagers wish for, regardless of consequences. Ortiz is the author of EXCAVATION: A MEMOIR (Future Tense Books, 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2014). Wendy writes the column On the Trail of Mary Jane for McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
Wendy C. Ortiz was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015), and the dreamoir Bruja (CCM). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such venues as The New York Times, Joyland, StoryQuarterly, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Her “Urban Liminal” series of texts appear alongside signature graphic representations of the projects of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in the book Amplified Urbanism (2017). Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.
Excavation Book Ortiz
Wendy is a recipient of two writing residencies at Hedgebrook (2007 and 2009). In 2015 she adapted a short play from her essay “Spell” for One Axe in collaboration with and directed by Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang, Equity).
Wendy has read and spoken at a number of universities including UC San Diego, UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, UC Santa Barbara, Eastern Illinois University, CSU Chico, CSU Fresno, Santa Monica College, Northwestern University, Riverside Community College, and the University of San Francisco.
The Special Collections and Archives Department at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville Campus invited Wendy to archive personal materials in their Living Writers Archive in March 2017. Wendy’s zine from the 1990s, Freefeeder, is archived at the Ruel Gaviola Zine Collection at University of California at Santa Barbara; Bowling Green State University; SUNY at Buffalo; and Yale University.
(author photo credit: Monica Orozco, demonica photo)
Excavation By Wendy C Ortiz
Twitter: @WendyCOrtiz
Wendy Nelson Ortiz
Interview with Sarah Einstein for Brevity Nonfiction Blog, July 2014
Wendy Ortiz Author
Praise for “Mudhoney” in Vol. 1 Brooklyn