www.BXTimes.com BRONX WEEKLY March 15, 2020 12
Bronx native’s book turned into a movie
BY JASON COHEN
Bronx native Claribel Ortega
is not only fulfi lling her
lifelong dream of becoming a
published author, but her book
is headed for the silver screen.
Ortega, 36, who lives in
Peekskill, but grew up in Hunts
Point and Soundview, fell in
love with writing as a child.
Her fi rst book ‘Ghost Squad,’
is due out Friday, April 7 and
in February, was announced
it was being developed into a
movie.
She heard the earth shattering
news in October and has
been on ‘cloud nine’ since.
“I was in my offi ce and I
screamed,” she recalled. “I was
really just in shock.”
Her journey to becoming
an author did not happen overnight.
As a child, Spanish was
the primary language spoken
in her home. She was born a
year after her parents Anazaria
and Pablo Ortega immigrated
here.
Beside school, she learned
English from TV and YouTube
and often helped her parents
with writing checks and other
mundane tasks.
Anazaria was a lover of arts,
writing and music and instilled
that passion in her daughter.
Ortega wrote short stories and
hoped to one day be a professional
writer.
“I’ve always loved to write,”
Ortega said. “I grew up with
everyone telling me I should
write.”
After attending the Academy
of Mt. Ursula at 330 Bedford
Park Boulevard and Yorktown
High School in Westchester, she
went to SUNY Purchase, where
she majored in journalism. She
wrote for the student newspaper
there and after graduation,
worked briefl y as a reporter for
the Rivertowns Enterprise in
Westchester.
When her brother Pablo
passed away at the age of 35
in 2011 from cancer, his death
prmpted her to write her
fi rst book, ‘Witches, Punks &
Cursed Things,’ which has yet
to be published. The book project
helped her cope.
“I was having a hard time
dealing with it (his death),” Ortega
explained.
She worked as an assistant
for Creative Arts Agency and
then for a book company, but
her passion to write continued.
So a few years ago, she decided
to merge her family’s culture
into a book.
In Dominican tradition fi refl
ies represent lost loved ones
and in the book Lucely and her
best friend, Syd, cast a spell
that accidentally awakens malicious
fi refl y spirits, wreaking
havoc throughout St. Augustine.
Together, they must
join forces with Syd’s witch
grandmother, Babette, and her
tubby tabby, Chunk, to fi ght the
haunting head-on and reverse
the curse to save the town and
spirits before it’s too late.
“It’s a very personal book,”
she said. “I wanted it to be true
to my own childhood.”
She heard the novel was being
shopped around to movie
studios, but when Oscar award
winning director Brenda Chapman
signed on it was too good
to be true. Chapman was the
fi rst woman to win an Academy
award for best-animated
feature fi lm, ‘Brave.’
“It was a really happy moment
for me,” she commented.
BCA supports home-grown talent in Westchester Sq.
BY GUS FISHER
When Jeremy McQueen fi rst
saw the Phantom of the Opera at
the age of eight, he was captured
by the magic of dance. But after
enrolling in ballet school, he was
quickly confronted with the reality
of being Black in the whitedominated
world of ballet.
Years later, McQueen developed
‘The Storm,’ a ballet that represented
his own experience and
identity. The 22-minute piece told
the story of Black communities
persevering through Hurricane
Katrina and Hurricane Harvey.
It was predominantly funded by a
$5,000 grant from the Bronx Council
on the Arts.
“We don’t fund people to just
stay in their home and paint, as
great as that is,” said Bryan Glover,
the council’s director of grants and
programs, in an interview. “We
want artists to go out and engage
with the people around them.”
McQueen leveraged the council’s
grant to bring the experiences
of his community to the world of
ballet – and the world of ballet to
people in his community, who often
can’t afford to catch a show at
Lincoln Center.
“There was an older gentleman
who came to one of my performances
and had never seen a ballet
before,” McQueen said. “He was
a former football player, not the
kind of guy you would typically
call ‘artsy.’ But I’ll never forget, he
came up to me after the show and
said, ‘That was the coolest thing
I’ve ever seen.”
The BCA grant, known as the
Bronx Recognizes its Own Award,
is given out annually to Bronx
sculptors, writers, musicians and
artists of all mediums. The award
supports the artists’ individual
endeavors, as well as service projects
for artists to give back to their
community.
Davalois Fearon, a three-time
recipient of the grant, used the
award to provide dance workshops
at the Bronx Library Center. Conceived
after her nephew passed
away from a fatal asthma attack,
Fearon’s workshops use movement
to tell the stories of people who are
most vulnerable to public health
risks.
Kiara Jones is a Bronx fi lmmaker
who used the council’s
grant to develop an ambitious scifi
movie about life on earth in the
wake of environmental catastrophe.
“A project of this magnitude
requires a lot of resources to get
off the ground,” Jones said. “Technology
makes fi lmmaking more
inexpensive in some ways. But it
also has set the expectations way
higher.”
Poet Heather Archibald said
that, aside from fi nancial security,
the award provided her with
the motivation to keep pursuing
her craft. “One year ago, I was in
the nursing home recovering from
two surgeries, feeling down and
depressed,” said poet Heather Archibald
in an interview. “When I
got the email saying ‘congratulations,
you won the grant,’ I got up
and started walking again.”
Artists from throughout the
borough gathered to exchange
ideas, inspirations and contacts
at the council’s open house on
Westchester Square. The night’s
theme was Sustainability in the
Arts, which lead to conversations
about art as a tool to represent climate
change, using community
gardens as a venue for art performances
and how to reduce waste of
art materials.
Claribel Ortega Photo Courtesy Claribel Ortega
Farmer and community organizer Karen Washington speaks at the Bronx Council on the Arts open house on November 23.
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