WENDY C. ORTIZ is a writer of creative nonfiction who works in hybrid forms, essays, and memoir. She is the author of Excavation: A Memoir; Hollywood Notebook, and Bruja: A Dreamoir, all of which were reprinted by Northwestern University Press in 2025. Her writing has appeared in Pleiades, BOMB Magazine online, Joyland, The New York Times, Fence, and many other journals. Ortiz is a therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. Her current project is the weekly newsletter Mommy’s El Camino.
“Wendy C. Ortiz is an essential chronicler of queer embodiment, dreams, and the ways that place and perspective create us. What a treasure to be gifted these bold and lyrical modern classics in updated form.”
—Melissa Febos, national bestselling author of Girlhood, Body Work, and The Dry Season
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.
She is a recipient of a Tin House writing residency (Fall 2022) and 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 was the Special Guest Faculty in Nonfiction at California Institute of the Arts in the MFA in Creative Writing Program, 2024-2025. She 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, among many others.
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.
First editions of Wendy’s books can be found in public and academic libraries worldwide.
Selected Conversations
“There Is So Much to Unlearn”: An Interview with Wendy C. Ortiz by Jax Connelly in Heavy Feather Review, Spring 2025
This Podcast Will Change Your Life: “A Rich Life” with Wendy C. Ortiz, in conversation with Ben Tanzer, Spring 2025
2021 Virtual Author Conversation: Wendy and Emma Copley Eisenberg