WENDY C. ORTIZ READS FROM HER NEW BOOK BRUJA AND HENRY HOKE READS FROM HIS BOOK THE BOOK OF ENDLESS SLEEPOVERS WITH OTHER SPECIAL GUESTS

Bruja (Civil Coping Mechanism) Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanism)

CCM is pleased to announce Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz, the author of the critically acclaimed Excavation: A Memoir and Hollywood Notebook. With Bruja, Ortiz continues to upend and reinvent the memoir in inventive and deeply emotional ways to better fit the terms and trajectory of her exploration. 

Behold the “dreamoir”–the details from the most malleable and revelatory portions of one’s dreams, catalogued in bold detail. Ortiz has created a new literary form, a parallel plane where the cast of characters are the people that occupied one’s waking life; Bruja is a narrative that’s equal parts delicate and bold, a literary adventure through the boundaries of memoir, where the self is viewed from a position anchored into the deepest recesses of the mind. 

The end result is perhaps one of the most candid expressions of personal history, the subconscious bared in full, revealing the part of oneself that is often the most difficult to see. Bruja will be released as part of the Quarter Four 2016 CCM Catalogue. We can’t wait to show you more. We’re coping. 

Guests are encouraged to come dressed as a character/person/animal/object from their dreams. 

Praise for Bruja 

"In Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz deftly navigates the land of dreams in what she calls a dreamoir. By telling us her dreams, by revealing her most unguarded and vulnerable self, Ortiz is, truly, offering readers the most intimate parts of herself–how she loves, how she wants, how she lives, who she is. Bruja is not just a book–it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing." -- Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and An Untamed State

"Bruja calls into question not only what is a memoir, but what is a life. Politics, books, mass media, random encounters, work, relationships tumble into the depths of consciousness, and the self spirals open, huge and passionate. Ortiz’s dreamoir is a multidimensional love story with the whole mess of existence. I loved it."--Dodie Bellamy, author of When the Sick Rule the World, The TV Sutras, Cunt-Ups, and many more

"Wendy C. Ortiz has invented her own genre, in her sleep, no less. Bruja is at once lush and spare, funny and weird, disturbing and sometimes even beautiful in the way that dreams can be. She’s crafted an absurdly real and compelling story here, one dream at a time." - Elizabeth Crane, author of The History of Great Things

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir and Hollywood Notebook. Her work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such places as The New York Times, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, Fanzine, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Wendy lives in Los Angeles.

Book of Endless Sleepovers

Bring your favorite stuffed animal, hold it tight, and stay awake as long as you can. The Book of Endless Sleepovers tosses and turns with telepathic campfire stories, crypto-zoological memoir and Mark Twain slash fiction. It’s fourteen interconnected tales of haunted childhood identity and exploded imagination. Nobody wants to fall asleep first.

Praise for Book of Endless Sleeovers

“I love how Henry Hoke plays fast and loose with autobiography and genre. His Book of Endless Sleepovers is wry and finely-wrought, a philosophical fever dream studded with the pleasure of proper names and surprising turns of phrase, a lyric page-turner.”-Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“In his atmospheric debut, Henry Hoke maps the wild country of adolescence, the murky realm of childhood and its mysterious stirrings, where the names of cities are always changing along with our own, as we swap them for those of our favorite characters: The Hardy Boys or Huck Finn or Peter Pan. A land where pet bunnies are eaten by owls in the night and cats change owners at their own will. The Book of Endless Sleepovers is beguiling and evocative and sometimes sad. It is not to be missed.”-Kate Durbin, author of E! Entertainment

“The Book of Endless Sleepovers is hot and cool, fine and blunt, new and ancient, puzzling and cannily revealing. Hoke's sharp, funny fictions are like shards of the books I hope to find lying around in Borges' garden of forking paths.”-Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama

“Hoke’s book dazzles. Beneath the surface of linguistic playfulness and narrative experimentation are real truths about love and brotherhood and especially about childhood: wild and thrilling and, as all childhoods are, full of terror. Worth reading for the brilliant reimaginings of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn alone, there is so much here that will astonish, surprise, and delight.”-Rahul Mehta, author of No Other World

Henry Hoke was a child in the South and an adult in New York and California. He's the author of Genevieves (winner of the Subito Press prose contest, forthcoming 2017) and The Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, Gigantic, Winter Tangerine and Carve. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal. 

Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She has a strong affinity for tattoos, otters, cat mystery books, and actual cats, but has mixed feelings about pants. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Jaded Ibis Press, and Midnight Breakfast.

Iris De Anda is a Guanaca Tapatia poet who hosts The Writers Underground Open Mic at the Eastside Cafe every third Thursday of the month and the author of CODESWITCH: Fires From Mi Corazon. www.irisdeanda.com.

Myriam Gurba is a writer, artist, and low key bon vivant living at the southern most tip of LA County. Her memoir Mean is forthcoming from Coffee House Press.

Amanda Yates Garcia is an artist, writer, witch, healer and the Oracle of Los Angeles. Recent performance rituals include Capitalism Exorcism at Human Resources and Devouring Patriarchy at the Women’s Center for Creative Work. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Black Clock, the Rough Magick anthology, Entropy, Synema Publikationen (Cinema Magazine), and WITCH. Amanda hosts her bi-monthly show The Oracle Hour on KCHUNG radio; teaches the Magical Praxis monthly mystery school; and performs private rites of healing and empowerment at her magical studio in West Adams.