program to Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss, and knowing she had written three books of fiction that contained themes that she’d lived through and then developed in her memoir made me realize I wanted to fly straight to memoir.īK: I can’t help thinking of the book in very cinematic terms (I really hope it becomes a movie).

Ivers and me I was able to imagine a young woman like myself with a history like mine having other relationships, inventing what might happen to her and the people she was in relationship with. Through that “veil of fiction” I was able to carry out story lines that hadn’t been played out in reality but had been discussed between Mr. WO: I felt it had to be memoir from the moment I decided to tackle it in full, but I spent many years before trying to sort out the experience in fiction (short stories). BK: Because of those initial hesitations about perception, did you ever consider writing it as fiction to give you some distance or safety from it or did you feel it had to be a memoir? I guess, I’m wondering about if not having the veil of fiction was important to you in terms of exorcising the story. That was a good way of working past any recent hesitation I might have had. Then the physical reactions passed and I was fortunate to get good feedback on the piece and knew I was heading in the right direction. I got some practice when “Mix Tape” was published by The Nervous Breakdown last year and in the first 24 hours of it being on the web I went through physical reactions that were all about the hesitation. My hesitations have always been about how I might be perceived once the story was out. Ortiz: This book spent some time being ignored (I always imagined it sitting in a corner, sulking) but when I look back at this time, I recognize now that it was steeping. Was this book like that for you? Did you have any hesitation in writing it? If you did, how did you work past that to write it? I had the opportunity to talk to her about the book and the process of writing it.īrian Kornell: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about stories that demand to be told or ones, especially when it’s memoir, that a writer cannot ignore despite their best efforts to do so. Ortiz writes with emotional frankness about difficult subjects, while maintaining the lyric beauty of the world around her. It is a book that spoke to me in a way that very few books have before.

She is the author of Excavation, a recently released memoir from Future Tense Books, about family, secrets, sex, and coming to terms with her queer identity. Ortiz’s story “Interiors” appeared in April 2012 issue of PANK.

Wendy c ortiz excavation