Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. Her first book, Hollywood Notebook, is forthcoming from Writ Large Press in 2014. 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. Wendy has written op-eds for The Olympian and the Los Angeles Times, as well as numerous articles for Works In Progress in Olympia, Washington. She is an adjunct faculty in creative writing and has also facilitated creative writing workshops with Los Angeles youth in juvenile detention facilities. While living in Olympia, Washington, she was a mudwrestler, library worker, and editor and publisher of 4th Street, a handbound literary journal. Wendy received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College in 1995 and lived in Olympia, Washington for eight years before returning to Los Angeles.

Wendy's book What Is And What Should Never Be is represented by Tricia Davey of Davey Literary and Media Management. Wendy is at work on essays, a book based on the Modern Love essay published in The New York Times, as well as a poetry collection. She lives in Los Angeles with the love of her life and their toddler daughter.

She can be found on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WendyCOrtiz

On tumblr: wendycortiz.tumbler.com

The Coachella Review interview with Wendy regarding her piece "Listen"

Antonia Crane interviews Wendy about Rhapsodomancy Reading Series for the ZYZZYVA blog

Literary Mama offers writing prompt based on "Minutes Are Just Seconds Aren't Minutes"

Interview with Eloise Klein Healy for The Rumpus

:: UPCOMING READINGS ::

Rhapsodomancy Reading Series, Los Angeles
Wendy will be reading at the 9th anniversary of Rhapsodomancy, Sunday, October 13th, 2013.

:: Other Awards & Achievements ::

• Finalist, the William Allen Creative Nonfiction Prize of The Journal, the literary magazine of The Ohio State University, April 2006.
• Co-editor and co-publisher of Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy. Los Angeles: LitRhap Press, 2005.
• Finalist, University of Arizona Poetry Center Summer Residency, 2003.
• Fellowship to Idyllwild Summer Poetry Program, July 2003.
• Finalist for the Firebox Fiction/Fifty-Fifty Award, Night Train magazine, Summer 2002.
• Prose Poetry and Anarchist Praxis: Creative Agents of Radical Transformation, critical paper, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MFA In Creative Writing, Antioch University Los Angeles, Summer/Fall 2001.
• Invited to teach "The Language of Inclusion," a one-time workshop, co-sponsored by the Students of Color Anthology at The Evergreen State College, as part of The Campus Week of Dialogue on Race, a national initiative sponsored by President Clinton's One America, October 2000.
• Self-published zine Freefeeder catalogued at State University of New York at Buffalo, Yale University Library, and the Ruel Gaviola Zine Collection at University of California Santa Barbara.
• 1993 Dutton’s Short Story Award, Los Angeles Valley College for fiction.