Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. Her book EXCAVATION: A MEMOIR will be published by Future Tense Books in July 2014, and her second book, HOLLYWOOD NOTEBOOK, will be published by Writ Large Press in November 2014. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Nervous Breakdown, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Brain, Child magazine, Mutha Magazine, The Rumpus, [PANK], and Specter Magazine, among others. She holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. A Writer-in-Residence at Hedgebrook in 2007 and 2009, Wendy is also co-founder and curator of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series at the Good Luck Bar in Hollywood.
Wendy has read at various venues, including the West Hollywood Book Fair (Los Angeles), The Knitting Factory (Los Angeles), World Stage (Los Angeles), the Echo Park Poetry Festival (Los Angeles), and the first Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington in 2000.
She has been a creative writing teacher of undergraduate university students as well as Los Angeles youth in juvenile detention facilities. While living in Olympia, Washington, she was a mudwrestler, library worker, and editor and publisher of a handbound literary journal. She received a B.A. from The Evergreen State College in 1995 and lived in Olympia, Washington for eight years before returning to Los Angeles. She is currently at work on a memoir and a poetry collection.
