ARTIST BIO

Ms. Ortiz is an enrolled Acoma Pueblo poet and scholar, born and raised in the southwest and is a recent graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she spent five years studying creative writing (with an emphasis in poetry and creative non-fiction) and where she received her BFA in creative writing in May of 2006. She graduated with her first degree (an AA in creative writing) in the spring of 2004.

Ms. Ortiz has studied under and worked with notable literary artists, scholars, and professionals such as Pulitzer prize winning Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, Diane Reyna, Elizabeth Archuleta, Harlan McKasato, Levi Romero, poet-laureate Arthur Sze, playwrights Bruce King, Diane Reyner, Hanay Geigomah, scholars Gregory Cajete, Steve Wall, Steve Fadden and Charlene Teters, among others. She’s diversified her academic experience at every possible opportunity, taking advantage of various institutes, lectures, symposiums, workshops, and programs both at IAIA and throughout the nation-among them a Native literature seminar taken in May 2006 with professor and author Evelina Zuni Lucero.

Ms. Ortiz has been published in numerous publications, most recently her article, A New Vision of and for Native Literature was published in THE Magazine in the summer of 2006. In the spring of 2006 Ms. Ortiz was published in Scrimshaw: Neo-Modern Literature from the Institute of American Indian Arts, a publication which she also co-edited. She was published in a collection of letters and essays entitled, Letters from Young Activists published by Nation Books in 2005. Ms. Ortiz was first published in a collection of poems, stories, and creative non-fiction called Night is Gone, Day is Still Coming published by Candlewick Press, in 2003. Ms. Ortiz is currently at work on a creative non-fiction project edited by Onondaga writer Eric Gansworth, entitled Sovereign Bones— a publication anticipated in 2007. Ms. Ortiz was awarded the prestigious Truman Capote fellowship award for her excellence in creative writing in the spring of 2003.

Ms. Ortiz says of her writing, in a line from one of her poems, "I am speaking to the very essence of the American Indian experience, which is wholly and entirely a story about America itself. It is a story about love and losing everything. It is a story about us." Ms. Ortiz is currently at work on her first manuscript, a collection of poems, prose, and short stories (the title of which she is keeping undisclosed for the time being) and is expecting its publication in '07.

Ms. Ortiz says of her dreams and work thus far, "I am wholly committed to continuing to write and develop-- at every single level-- as an artist, a scholar, an advocate, a teacher, and a leader. Ultimately, it is my dream to continue to write, receive my MFA in creative writing, return to teach creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and eventually, to serve as the IAIA's first Pueblo-woman president."

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

University of New Mexico
Master of Fine Arts: Creative Writing, in progress
Institute of American Indian Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts: Creative Writing, 2006
Institute of American Indian Arts
Associate of Fine Arts: Creative Writing, 2004

An excerpt from poem entitled "Owls" :

By Sara M. Ortiz

I.

story of the tiny owls in the desert. Antonio young, bold arrogant and unafraid-- shooting one of them through the eye, the right one or the left I do not know; there in the late afternoon sun. And then the "simple" way I had come to pen, careful and only half-aware, a fractured black line across the tiny blue-green veins of my left wrist. Mouthing the words silently to myself, "cut here". I wondered aloud to him then, "Have you ever heard of anyone who had such a tattoo, and if not-- who do you think would get such a tattoo? What kind of person do you think they are?" Antonio, he looked at me then, expressionless. And then, came wonderment. "Are you serious?", exposing his own wrist to me, amazed. "Me. It's me." A grayish, greenish blue-- blurred lines of a self-inflicted word-- "Largo", a name to hold him placed long ago. But this word, and it all began to flood back to me somehow, a cloudy wash of memory like that liquid flowing through the arroyo in the valley after a summer storm; the indistinct blue, green, gray scrawling was placed there upon the thin and bending skin-- the palimpsest-- of his wrist, almost ten years before, to cover the tiny fractured line he had scrawled on it-- not with pen, but with a sewing needle, and not thread, but the certain threading of stolen India ink to mark the place where one might cut. He had been the one to show me. Hustler, dealer, lover, father, child. And though, he had never made the incision upon his own wrist, ten years passed, and I was placing my own fragile instrument upon the quiet flowing rivulets of my own veins. "Cut here".

III.

Hunting. Thinking now of the image upon
that tiny pixilated screen. The camera
in the cell had taken it, kept it somehow.
And delivered it to my hungry eyes.
Refracted light, lids and shadows to
let it enter in-- the image
of the young woman, brown,
skin taut, light brown flowing
hair to her middle-back. Ass-up,
legs spread wide-apart,
hairless, reached towards that tiny
camera, engorged and meeting my eye.

That nameless center, I saw and was
disgusted by. And I said then, that it was
not her nakedness, not her wanting that
had made my disgust so profound
and arisen in me. No not that. Something
else. The picture was boring. Mundane
and missing something. I wanted to see
her ripped apart. Her pose the same, open
exposed, bent, and wanting-- but torn. Wide open.
The lips, not taut and trembling but a torn
and tearing brilliant chasm, red, horrible
with possibility.

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