About
Photo by: Rachel Marie Photography
Naomi Ortiz (they/them) is a multidisciplinary Disabled, Mestize, poet, writer, and visual artist envisioning collective futures in the Arizona U.S.-Mexico borderlands. They weave conocimiento of self-care, disability justice, climate action, and interdependence as an invitation to build meaning, belonging, and connection within a rapidly changing world.
Ortiz is the author of two books and co-editor of the anthology Every Place on the Map is Disabled: Poems and Essays (Northwestern University Press, 2026), along with Camisha L. Jones, Michael Northen, and Travis Chi Wing Lau.
Their poetry/essay collection, Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice(punctum books, 2023) offers potent insights about the complexity of interdependence, calling readers to deepen their understanding of what it means to witness and love an endangered world.
Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice (Second Edition), offers powerful, thoughtful, transformative insight into self-care for social workers, teachers, community members, students, and organizations. Ortiz provides informative tools, insightful strategies, and generative reflection questions for diverse communities on addressing burnout.
2026 Arizona Humanities Speaker
Awarded 2026 Lead Artist, Access. Movement. Play. (A.M.P.) Residency at Movement Research, NYC.
2025-2026 awardee from the Landscape Research Group, for their project, “Heritage Sites and Ceremony from Bed to Land” moira williams & Naomi Ortiz.
For their work advancing the cultural landscape, Ortiz was selected by the Ford and Mellon Foundations as a 2022 U.S. Artist Disability Futures Fellow. (Supported by United States Artists, the Ford Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.)
Nominated for their multidisciplinary project, Complicating Conversations, Ortiz was awarded a 2021-2023 Reclaiming the U.S.-Mexico Reclaiming the Border Narrative Grant to bring focus to disability and climate action narratives in the borderlands. (Supported by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC).)
2019 Zoeglossia Poetry Fellow
Nominee for the 2025 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities.
Poems by Ortiz have been nominated for Best of the Internet and listed on Entropy’s “Best of 2020-2021: Favorite Poems Published Online.” Their poems have been displayed in Downtown Tucson, AZ as part of the Haiku Hike literary competition, as well as published in numerous anthologies and journals, including: Split This Rock Poem of the Week, POETRY, About Place literary journal, VIDA, The Texas Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Apogee, BathHouse, Held: Blessings for the Depths, and Law and Poetry: Promises from the Preamble.
In August 2026, the Tucson Museum of Art opened Fierce Bodies/Cuerpos Feroces. “Organized around the poetry of Tucson-based Naomi Ortiz (Disabled / Mestize), this exhibition brings together creative voices from the Borderlands and Latin America to explore the deep connections between culture, identity, and wellbeing.”
Ortiz’ poem “majestic disabled/queer/people of color elders instruct how to dance in the struggle” was named a finalist for the Cid Pearlman Performance dance/video/art installation (home)Body, which premiered at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in January of 2022.
They have performed their poetry at a multitude of events such as the Dodge Poetry Festival (EWR), Tucson Festival of Books (TUC), Allied Media Conference (DTW), Earlham College Border Studies Program (TUC), Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (SBN) , the Feminism and Poetry Series hosted by Fordham University (NYC) and the inaugural Disability Pride Parade in Chicago.
Photo by: Jade Beall
Ortiz’ non-fiction essays can be found in publications such as, POETRY, Geez Magazine, Rooted in Rights, Borderlore, Lithub, and the Feminist Wire as well as in many anthologies including, Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by Alice Wong.
Artwork by Ortiz is part of the permanent collection at the University of Arizona Disability Cultural Center (new name, OMNES Disability Student Space) and has been featured in shows in Tucson-AZ, Boston-MA, and San Francisco-CA. Their paintings appear on book covers, postcards, and in the 2022 Syracuse Workers Peace Calendar. They collaborated with moira williams, on the art project Touch Back In-digi-nality, funded in part by the Emily Hall Tremaine foundation.
Ortiz is grounded in social justice work through their tenure as Director of the disability justice project, National Kids As Self Advocates and as the former Southern Arizona Director of the anti-violence projects, Help Increase the Peace, and Alternatives to Violence.
Currently, they organize with the Southern Arizona based NOPAL Collective, Sierra Club Borderlands group, and are a Steering Committee Member of the The Collective Loss Adaptation Project (CLAP). They are a highly acclaimed speaker and facilitator with a leadership style emphasizing inclusion. They have worked with Split This Rock, the Ford Foundation, Yale University Child Study Center, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Portland Art Museum, and other groups around the country.
Ortiz’s work has been described as, “cracking apart common beliefs to spill out beauty.” They are a proud Disabled, Mestize (Indigenous/ Latinx/ White), living with their partner and cats in the Arizona U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
Author photograph: Rachel Marie Photography