[1] She was co-founder, curator and host of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series, which began at the Good Luck Bar in Los Angeles in 2004 and continued through 2015.

Ellie Robins at the Los Angeles Times called the prose in Bruja "spare and at times mesmerizing" and added, "Ortiz celebrates [the] dark side of the human mind, nowhere more so than in Bruja...It's testament to Ortiz's courage as a memoirist that she's willing to live for a while on this submarine plane, among the elements that dictate her fate — and to invite her readers along for the show.

"[12] On January 19, 2020, Ortiz tweeted about a then-unpublished novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell titled My Dark Vanessa, saying: "can’t wait until February when a white woman’s book of fiction that sounds very much like Excavation is lauded, stephen king’s stamp of approval is touted, etc.

[19] Nevertheless, in response to social media comments, and in the wake of the controversy over American Dirt,[20] Oprah Winfrey rescinded her selection of My Dark Vanessa for her influential Book Club.

[14][21] In 2023, Ortiz published a follow-up essay revisiting the controversy, in which she described the ostracization she experienced after making her allegations against Kate Elizabeth Russell three years earlier.

[22] Nevertheless, Ortiz has experienced subsequent literary success, including a Tin House residency, publication in BOMB,[23] and the republication of her three books by Northwestern University Press.