Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. She was awarded a writing residency from Hedgebrook in 2007. Recent or forthcoming publications include Palabra: A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art, Cranky, KNOCK, Eclipse, and others. She is cofounder and co-curator of the three-year-old Rhapsodomancy reading series at the Good Luck Bar in Hollywood. Wendy holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she is currently a graduate student of psychology. She is working on a memoir.

In answer to our question of why she writes, Wendy responded:

“Monday: The idea of being a writer, in a coffee shop no less (until the coffee shop is inundated with screenplay writers. Then it’s more of a struggle. And I leave).

Tuesday: Channeling the experience I had at my first writing retreat this year.

Wednesday: Feeling as though I’m sailing alone for miles out to sea, the black humps of the sea monster on my left, the realization that I know how to steer, the learning of new vocabularies for being pitched at sea, this sea of writers. I am not alone after all.

Thursday: Remembering the ghost story I wrote at the age of six. The magazine I created in second grade. The poem about Martin Luther King, Jr. I wrote in sixth grade. The novel I started writing at the age of thirteen, which is at present over 400 pages and unfinished.

Friday: My weekly four-hour writing date with fabulous author and friend Emily Rapp.

Saturday: Wait. I’m a writer? My mom doesn’t think so! I’ll show her…

Sunday: The thorny spines of rejection and the small, bright blooms of publication…”

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