Hollywood Notebook

"Wendy C. Ortiz is establishing herself as a powerful voice in the literary community... Readers who like their heroines scrappy and their prose lyrical will delight in Hollywood Notebook’s intimate descriptions of a restless mind at work."  —LARB

“[S]uffused with the heritage of the city as a place for writers…Ortiz quietly observes the day-to-day life of the writer, the smell of food in the diners, the heat, the locales where writers hang out. An optimistic book that also reveals the hinterland and grain of a writing culture that goes back 100 years.” —The Guardian 

“The entire project becomes nearly reminiscent of the self-musings of Maggie Nelson, if Nelson were consulting astrological charts rather than philosophy…Hollywood Notebook, then, is a sui generis gem, and one to take advantage of immediately. How often can we read a stranger’s journals so guiltlessly, and with such satisfaction? Ortiz inspires it — she’s laid herself bare, and in doing so dug deep in a way that so few memoirs can actually achieve.” —Jeva Lange, Electric Literature 

"What are our own truths? How many ways do we tell our stories? We list them, turn them into poetics, tell half-lies and then reveal them over and over as we meet our various selves on the page. Reading Ortiz’s Hollywood Notebook is an invitation to the writer– to make lists that sing truths and half-truths, to call them out as false, until we finally find our sister-twin.." —Winter Tangerine