Ortiz (2014, Future Tense Books), starts outside of the pages, begins to connect, opens its I up to you, by way of title and cover. Let them slip on your I.Įxcavation, the debut memoir by Wendy C.

Spin your story, make the words do the hard work-I’m paraphrasing here, bordering on fabrication, though the thesis remains factually accurate-and somehow find a way to make your story, your personal, fleshy story, universal. My I required more distance, more spatial breaths between me, my source material, and I.Īnd Nick Flynn opened the genre’s chest on stage, showed its heart to me, its beating organ, by revealing the connection between the personal and universal. As I listened, having no knowledge that I had already entered the first of a twenty-four month bout with writer’s block, I thought about the I. I, at that time, considered myself a memoirist: short memoir writer, flash memoir writer, architect of some future book of memoirs, maybe. Additionally, the writer and Ortiz can be seen exchanging notes and LOLs via Twitter because, in this modern literary era, such is the natural occurrence between like-minded writers and artistic peers.Īt a function in Williamsburg back in 2012, I sat in the back of a dark venue-a nightclub-turned-literary salon, I suppose-and listened to author Nick Flynn talk about the craft of memoir. Ortiz in three issues of Specter Magazine (two essays and an interview). Wendy lives in Los Angeles, California, where she is a parent and a psychotherapist in private practice.Disclosure: the writer of this review/essay/love letter has previously published author Wendy C. in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love, Hazlitt, StoryQuarterly and Joyland and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. Wendy gives talks and teaches creative writing around the country on the topics of memoir, risk-taking in writing, hybrid forms, and more. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (2014) Hollywood Notebook (2015) and the genre-breaking dreamoir Bruja (2016). She is a recipient of two writing residencies at Hedgebrook (20). 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). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” Wendy’s work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog.

Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity, and Access (EDIA).

Wendy c ortiz excavation