2025 Summer Workshops
“Edgework,” as defined by one online dictionary, is “behavior at the edge of what is normally allowed or accepted; risky or radical behavior.” Our week together will be spent looking at how the definitive and formative experiences of our lives are often experienced “at the edge” and how we might evoke and translate the exhilarating, sometimes painful, and often transformative power of our personal experiences at the edge into our writing. This workshop will be generative and collaborative with an emphasis on experiments. Attention will be given to the (personal, physical, mental, emotional) energy required to write memoir.
Please bring to the workshop your preferred writing materials and an openness to homework and suggested further reading.
Biography
Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, the prose poem memoir Hollywood Notebook, and the dreamoir Bruja. In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” Her writing has appeared or been profiled in a number of places including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, Joyland, FENCE, and McSweeney’s. Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.