February 5, 2019 at 8:56 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Memoirs, Publishers, Relatives, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, grief, illness, Mayor of the Roses, medicine, memoir, memories, Miami University Press, short story, teaching, writing process
For the workshop this weekend, re-reading some old stories to show different ways of writing memoir. In particular, thinking of a story called Lenox Hill, December 1991, which Jessica Hagedorn included in the anthology Charlie Chan is Dead.
When Jessica contacted self to solicit a piece, self had nothing, nothing, nothing.
Her sister had died just the month before. She did keep a diary, though.
The diary became the story. The first story in what later become a cycle of grief stories: Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press)
For a while, a course called Ethics in Medicine, taught at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, included the story in their syllabus.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 1, 2019 at 3:56 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Bellingham Review, Fridays, Literary Magazines, Manila Noir, Potomac Review, teaching, The Lost Language
2018 AWP Bookfair, Tampa, FL
Found these copies of self’s third short story collection in the National Bookstore in Gateway Mall, Cubao, Metro-Manila! (January 2018)
Such a beautiful cover! POTOMAC REVIEW 59
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January 25, 2019 at 5:41 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: California, Cee Neuner, Fridays, Hotel Amerika, Literary Magazines, teaching, TransGenre
Must be on a roll! Participated in two Fun Foto Challenges in one week!
The theme of this one is BLACK AND WHITE. Self took these pictures just a few minutes ago. Thanks to Cee Neuner for the always-wonderful prompts!
Self is teaching a three-day writing workshop in Mendocino in February. Here are some of the materials from the last time she taught this class, in 2016:
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October 14, 2018 at 9:22 am (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Holidays, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Bluestem, dystopia, inspiration, Ireland, science fiction, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self is going to try, while she’s at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, pulling all her science fiction together into one collection.
What to call it?
She’s toying with the idea of making this the first story:
THE FREEZE (published in Bluestem)
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine
Thanksgiving was just a week ago. I served brined turkey with oatmeal rolls and my special fig-and-rice stuffing.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 7, 2018 at 3:36 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Events, Filipino writers, Readings, Redwood City, The Philippines
Cover of Benedicta Takes Wing by Monterey Artist Jean Vengua
The collection is called Benedicta Takes Wing, and you are crazes if you are anywhere near the Redwood City Main Library (1044 Middlefield at Jefferson) and you do not drive straight over on Saturday, 8 Sept, 2:30 p.m., the Fireplace Room, to hear Veronica Montes and fellow writer Lillian Howan read, from their respective books! Crazes!
Veronica Montes, author of Benedicta Takes Wing: Stories (Philippine America Literary House, 2017)
Self will excerpt from Lillian’s book, The Charm Buyers, next.
“Lamentation” opens thus:
Her name was like a song: Maria Josefa Gabriela Cariño Silang. I wish I had given it to her.
* * * *
In the province of Ilocos Sur, there is a barrio called Canlogan. It sits in the shadow of a mountain range that rises up like an enormous hand telling you to stop, telling you there is no way to pass. But the mountains are not as impenetrable as they seem; they are sliced through with rivers, each one running swift and strong. This is where my daughter, who I did not name, was born.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 6, 2018 at 7:05 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Events, novel, Readings, Redwood City
Two wonderful Asian American women writers are coming to Redwood City for reading and book-signings!
By Lillian Howan, Published by University of Hawai’i Press, 2017
A collection of short stories by the great Wakako Yamauchi who recently passed away. Edited by Lillian Howan, published by Hawai’i University Press.
Veronica Montes, author of Benedicta Takes Wing: Stories (Philippine America Literary House, 2017)
Cover of Benedicta Takes Wing by Monterey Artist Jean Vengua
Saturday, 8 September 2018
2:30 pm
FIRESIDE ROOM, REDWOOD CITY MAIN LIBRARY
1400 Middlefield (corner Jefferson Avenue)
Redwood City
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
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August 29, 2018 at 2:30 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Links, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Cee Neuner, India, memories
Love this prompt from Cee Neuner!
A collection of short stories by the great Wakako Yamauchi who passed away recently. Her own art is on the cover. Edited by Lillian Howan, published by Hawai’i University Press.
Bought from a Tibetan vendor in Dharamsala: “This will make you strong like _____!” said the vendor to me. Forget which Hindu god has the lightning bolt.
College-age self and Dear Departed Dad
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 16, 2018 at 12:12 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, discoveries, Events, fiction, novel, Readings, Redwood City
Fireplace Room, Downtown Library, Redwood City
The first reading of the series was Holocaust Survivor, Public Speaker and Memoirist Sylvia Ruth Gutmann, reading from her book A Life Rebuilt: The Remarkable Transformation of a War Orphan. It was held two nights ago, in the Fireplace Room of the Main Library, and self is most happy to report the reading was a resounding success: a sizeable audience packed the room. High Fives to Sylvia Ruth Gutman for kicking off the series on such an auspicious note!
The second reading is a Women Authors Panel featuring self, Lillian Howan and Veronica Montes. Saturday, Sept. 8, 2:30 p.m., at the Fireplace Room of the Downtown Library. Self is a long-time Redwood City resident, and she’s so pleased to be reading with two of her favorite writers!
Veronica Montes’s first book, Benedicta Takes Wing and Other Stories (Philippine American Literary House, 2018), is a sparkling collection of stories about Filipino Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lillian Howan’s first novel, The Charm Buyers (University of Hawai’i Press, 2017) is an extraordinary and powerful love story, set in Tahiti during the last years of French nuclear testing in the Pacific, in the 1990s.
About self: She’s published three collections of short stories (Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language) and a novella, Jenalyn (Vagabondage Press), that was a finalist for the 2014 Saboteur Award. She has stories published or forthcoming in Quarterly West, Bellingham Review, Crab Orchard Review, Juked, and Prairie Schooner.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
The last event in the series is a reading by Vanessa Garcia, reading from See You at the 7: Stories from the Bay Area’s Last Original Mile House. The 7 Mile House in Brisbane is the only Bay Area mile house operating at its original location. Garcia will read on Sept. 26, 7 p.m., in the Downtown Library Community Room.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 5, 2018 at 4:12 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Filipino Writers, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, fantasy, Just published, Literary Magazines, Saturday, short story, space fantasy
Sadly, both the AWP2019 panel proposals self was included in were rejected. One was a mixed-genre panel, the brainchild of Philadelphia poet Anne-Adele Wight. The other was a Quarterly West panel on experimental fiction.
Nevertheless, self still has much to celebrate. Such as, her story This Is End being in The Cost of Paper, vol. 5 (It’s the last story in the anthology). The anthology’s editor was Julianne Berokoff.
Self just had another story picked up for the Winter 2018 issue of Prairie Schooner, due out this December. And the two stories couldn’t be more different: the one in The Cost of Paper is space fantasy, the Prairie Schooner story is straight-up realism.
This Is End is the third story in a cycle about a boy named Dragon, a missing girl named Her, a teacher named Fire Lizard, a bully named Big, the bully’s friend Drinker, and a new student named Knot.
Dragon saw Big knock Her out cold (in the middle of a class, why). Her never came back to class, but sometimes Dragon thinks he sees her waving to him from a window of an abandoned space station called the Kobayashi Maru. Ever since then, he’s been itching for revenge.
Big doesn’t show up to class one day, Knot asks Dragon:
“Is it true? Tumor he had?”
We spot-check each other for tumors. We’re so afraid of it.
“Ecchymosis?” Knot persists.
Here’s a link to 1888 Center’s Bookstore.
Stay tuned.
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July 29, 2018 at 7:45 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: Ateneo, book lists, The Philippines
from “Hothouse” :
Tia Dolor has been around the world several times, but towns and cities — Nikko and Capri and Copenhagen — all look alike to her: the same buildings, the same churches, the same automobiles. In fact, she is hard put to tell one country from another except from what they sell in the shops. And she has something to bring home for everybody — no one is ever forgotten — her suitcases are cleaned out of everything she has brought home including some that she went away with. And if you expect her somehow to look more chic (a new hairdo, a new suit) you are sorely disappointed: she minces down the ramp wearing the squirrel coat from Hong Kong and her black lizard skin wedgies.
Filipino (Prose) Literature in English, A Few Recommended Titles from the Golden Age:
- The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories, by Gregorio C. Brillantes
- A Season of Grace, by N. V. M. Gonzalez
- Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories, by N. V. M. Gonzalez
- The Bamboo Dancers, a novel by N. V. M. Gonzalez
- Now and At the Hour and Other Stories, by Aida L. Rivera
- Brother, My Brother: Stories, by Bienvenido Santos
- You Lovely People, by Bienvenido Santos
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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