Come join us as we celebrate the release of CalArts Faculty Chris Santiago’s new book of erasure-based poetry (Small Wars Manual, Milkweed Editions) and the re-issue from Northwestern University Press of Visiting Faculty Wendy C. Ortiz’s three influential non-fiction works (Excavation, Bruja, and Hollywood Notebooks). A reading and conversation with Wendy and Chris will be followed by a reception, which will in turn be followed by a reading from current MFA in Creative Writing Students from their recent works in non-fiction and erasure-based poetry.
Wendy C. Ortiz’s Excavation, Bruja, and Hollywood Notebooks each engage the terrain of non-fiction and memoir across markedly different formal routes; the first a memoir, the second a ‘dreamoir’, the third a notebook-style personal engagement with the worlds of Los Angeles in the first years of this already very strange century. All have had marked impact on contemporary readers and practitioners of non-fiction. Of Bruja Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, said “Bruja is not just a book; it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing.” “Wendy C. Ortiz has invented her own genre, in her sleep, no less.” added Elizabeth Crane, author History of Small Things. The Creative Writing MFA program is proud to be hosting Wendy Ortiz this year as Visiting Special Faculty in Non-Fiction. Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. She was awarded a Tin House residency in 2022. Her current project is Mommy’s El Camino, a weekly online newsletter.
Chris Santiago’s brand new work, Small Wars Manual, is a book-length work of erasure based poems, which takes as its archive the US military training guide of the same name. That guide, written to prepare US troops for combat against anti-colonial insurgents, was developed based on US Marine tactical experiences in occupations in places such as the Philippines, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and is still in use, having been assigned to US troops involved in the occupation of Iraq. Chris’ book Small Wars Manual takes that text and erases it to create poems of strange and disturbing power. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!, has already praised it as a “masterpiece,” calling it “one of those books I read and know at once I’ll be coming back to for the rest of my life.” Chris is a 2025 NEA Poetry Fellow and in addition to Small Wars Manual is the author of Tula, winner of the Lindquist & Vennum Prize and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. A past fellow of the McKnight Foundation, the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, and Kundiman, he studied creative writing at Oberlin and received his PhD from USC. He lives in Pasadena with his wife and two sons and teaches at CalArts in Critical Studies and the Creative Writing MFA Program.
