Wendy C. Ortiz with Megan Stielstra Author Talk

We are very excited to welcome Wendy C. Ortiz in conversation with Megan Stielstra for an event celebrating the reissue of three of Wendy's works, Hollywood Notebook, Excavation, and Bruja.

Please note: This event is free to attend. Registration is required. Masks are required for our in-person events.

About Hollywood Notebook:

A daylight traipse through early-aughts Los Angeles, Hollywood Notebook encapsulates the powerful feelings and hopeful futures of twentysomething Wendy C. Ortiz. In this boundary-defying sister memoir to Bruja, Ortiz navigates internal maps as she traverses external palm-treed streets, moving through her youthful twenties and into the pensiveness of her thirties. Peering at what lies ahead while dipping her toes into the past, Ortiz shows us that there is no place like Hollywood to unearth the joys of success and the blows of mistakes—both realized and denied. An innovative and bold examination of the daytime roaming mind, Hollywood Notebook is a cartography of love, loss, and transformation in the face of a brilliant psyche in a vibrant city.

About Excavation:

A darkly vibrant and daring memoir, Wendy C. Ortiz’s Excavation challenged the standard telling of abuse narratives when first published in 2014; over a decade later, it remains deeply prescient. Set in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley in the late 1980s, the narrative follows the spiraling entanglement between Wendy and her eighth-grade English teacher as she becomes both victim to and participant in a simultaneously predatorial and impassioned relationship. Baited by initial praise and a false sense of control, Wendy tumbles into a dangerous dynamic that spans the duration of her teens. Artfully constructed from her own journals and decades of personal excavation, the story of this secret relationship has imprinted on Wendy and readers alike. A stunningly honest look at memory, agency, and power, Excavation will claim your whole heart.

About Bruja:

Dubbed a “dreamoir,” Bruja is a bold and harrowing journey through the dream worlds of Wendy C. Ortiz. Sister memoir to Hollywood Notebook, it catalogs the happenings of the night: strange visions of the past warped by present-day inklings; animals running loose, never where they should be; familiar nature and architecture made malleable and new. Ortiz’s subconscious is bared in full on these pages as the author interrogates her histories. We bravely adventure into new literary form, walking the parallel plane of Ortiz’s waking life alongside her. Where the self is anchored in the deepest recesses of the mind, Ortiz invites us to push the boundaries of the subconscious and enter into the dreamoir.

WENDY C. ORTIZ is a writer of creative nonfiction who works in hybrid forms, essays, and memoir. She is the author of three books, all published by Northwestern University Press. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Joyland, The New York Times, Pleiades, Fence, and many other journals. Ortiz is a therapist in private practice in Los Angeles.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and theaters, festivals, and classrooms across the country. She teaches creative writing in Chicago and is an editor at Northwestern University Press.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.