April 5, 2017 at 6:18 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Calls, Conversations, Dearest Mum, Family, Filipino Writers, Lists, Memoirs, Places, Publishers, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, California, Mayor of the Roses, memories, Miami University Press, short story
There were fourteen years before self’s first and second book.
The first was published by Calyx Press in Corvallis, OR.
The second was published by Miami University Press.
The third, The Lost Language, is only available in the Philippines.
The fourth is an e-book published by Vagabondage in Florida.
There’s also an anthology she co-edited for Calyx Press: Going Home to a Landscape.
Recently, she got an email from writer and teacher Susie Hara, who said she had liked the story “Rufino” in Mayor of the Roses.
It was the last story to be included in the collection. She threw it in at the last minute.
Rufino was a real person.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Towards the end, he couldn’t wear any clothes. They had to cover him in banana leaves.
It was in July he died — I couldn’t believe it. A voice on the phone told me.
“Rufino died na.” It was my mother speaking. Naturally, she had to be the one to break the news.
I was staying in a friend’s house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In the mornings, fog blanketed the hills. We heard the mournful mooing of invisible cows. One or another of us would look east, toward where we heard Neil Young had his ranch, wondering whether we’d catch a glimpse of his pink cadillac that day.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 8, 2017 at 11:01 am (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, Calyx Press, Cassandra Clare, Doreen Fernandez, dystopia, Jane Austen, Lydia Davis, nonfiction, novel, poetry, science fiction, short story collections, Steampunk, The Hunger Games, The Infernal Devices, YA
Books that rocked self’s world:
- Break It Down, by Lydia Davis
- Empty Chairs, by Liu Xia
- The Charm Buyers, by Lillian Howan
- Yes (A screenplay), by Sally Potter
- The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
- Night Willow, by Luisa Igloria
- Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, by Doreen Fernandez
- The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
- Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill
- Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
- After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
- Memories Flow In Our Veins: Forty Years of Women’s Writings from Calyx, edited by the Calyx Editorial Collective
- The Infernal Devices Trilogy, by Cassandra Clare
- Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
- Going Home to a Landscape: a Filipino Women’s Anthology, edited by Virginia Cerenio and Marianne Villanueva
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February 9, 2017 at 8:39 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Events, novel, San Francisco, University of Hawaii
THE CHARM BUYERS, by Lillian Howan, is a novel that describes extraordinary beauty and turbulent change: Tahiti during the last years of French nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1990s. Tahiti in the 1990s is a place where a supernatural, shamanistic reality exists together with the traditions of the Hakka Chinese, set against the background of the French colonial past and the Ma’ohi struggle for independence. It presents a world in transition and its people — black pearl cultivators, artists, taro farmers, politicians, smugglers, and shamans.
The Charm Buyers is a thought-provoking insight into a time of cultural change. It captures an essence of existing between reality and surreality, dreaming and wakefulness, the past and the future. (Foreword Reviews)
Book Launch!
Wednesday, 15 February 2017
5 p.m.
Maier Room, Fromm Hall
University of San Francisco
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
Sponsored by the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, and the Center for Asia Pacific Studies.
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January 22, 2017 at 10:30 pm (Artists and Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, AWP, inspiration, interviews, Literary Magazines, poetry, writing process
“I do think persona is helpful in however heavy or light the disguise, if only to announce to the reader that if my persona says or does something they don’t find agreeable, it’s just a character, not the person.”
— Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in her interview with Eric Farwell, The Writer’s Chronicle, September 2016
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January 4, 2017 at 5:14 pm (Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, AWP, Events, fantasy, Juked.com, Literary Magazines, Readings, short story, Washington DC, writing conferences
Participating in a group reading for Quarterly West at Sixth Engine, a converted firehouse in Washington, DC. during the AWP Conference.
Date: 8 February 2017 (Details to follow), downtown Washington DC
Quarterly West Issue # 89 has self’s newest Dragon/Fire Lizard story, “First Causes.”
It’s a sequel to her “First Life,” published July 2015 in Juked.com
Stay tuned.
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January 4, 2017 at 4:56 pm (Artists and Writers, Explorers, Philippine History, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: artists residency, Asian American Writers, fantasy, historical fiction, literary awards, Literary Magazines, magical realism, short story, speculative fiction, The Philippines
Magellan’s Mirror
- Note: In this story, The Philippines is the home of giants. In the history books, Ferdinand Magellan is credited with their discovery.
During the next week, no natives appeared on the shore. The beach was empty as it had been on the first day, before the crew had sighted Enrique. The men looked up at the sky, cloudless and blue. Under their breaths, they cursed their leader.
The Beach at Capitola-by-the-Sea, late December 2016
In the middle of the third week, four of the giants were seen gesticulating on the shore. The sailors shook their heads. The natives importuned them with tragic gestures. Finally, the tribesmen boarded a massive canoe and began paddling towards the Trinidad. Magellan ordered his men to welcome them warmly. The crew offered the visitors their fill of wine. Just as the giants were sleepily dozing off, Magellan had his men shackle them.
Thanks to J Journal for nominating self’s story for the Pushcart. Self took the historical journey of Ferdinand Magellan and included magical elements. She has a Part II, called “Vanquisher.” And a third story, called “Residents of the Deep,” which she began at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, 2014, which takes place centuries later (1840s)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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December 8, 2016 at 4:57 am (Artists and Writers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, San Francisco, short story, writing process
Picture in Front of Moth & Dagger, Bush Street
The long scar from a knife fight several years ago is still visible, just above Gerry’s right ear. His back is covered with a variety of bluish, sloppy tattoos. A map of the Philippines snakes down his back. There’s a rose tattoo between his shoulder blades. Love, Suzy is just beneath his left ribs. Suzy Cheerleader, his girlfriend.
— “Gerry Dreams the Ocean,” short story in progress
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November 26, 2016 at 7:36 am (Conversations, Filipino Writers, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, fantasy, Fridays, short story, The Philippines
Hinoba-an, Negros Occidental, the Philippines: December 2010
A few weeks ago, when self was attending a reading in USF, Barbara Jane Reyes, poet and teacher, told self she was teaching “Isa” in her class this fall.
YEEEESSSSS!!!!
Five families lived on Isa. At first, there was a way to walk on the ground between the houses. But gradually the water rose and that was when we began to use the rope bridges.
In self’s story the water keeps rising and rising and rising, until gradually all the other islands get submerged. And there is only one left.
The families on Isa send out an expedition to see how far the water reaches. The journey takes them far away, and they realize that they’ve long passed the edges of their known world.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 21, 2016 at 4:47 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Fridays, short story, short story collections
“It was always a bogus-looking act, but at some point I just assumed that Filipinos were somehow predisposed to believing anyone who claimed to understand their pain.”
— from the story “Felix Starro” in the Lysley Tenorio collection, Monstress
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July 20, 2016 at 5:10 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Memoirs, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Anne Enright, Asian American Writers, Irish writers, New York, novel
The Green Road is taking self to some very unexpected places. Such as: New York City, 1991. Which turned out to be a watershed year for self as well. Just read her story “Lenox Hill, December 1991” in Charlie Chan Is Dead, Vol. 1, edited by Jessica Hagedorn.
Here’s an excerpt from Enright’s novel:
DAN – New York, 1991
. . . if the question was whether Billy was still sleeping with Gregory Savalas, then the answer was that they had barely slept together in the first place. Billy was a blonde boy, on the sturdy side, with a thug/angel thing going, so there was a line of sad bastards queuing at his door; half of them married, most of them in suits. And Billy hated the closet. What Billy wanted was big, shouty unafraid sex with someone who did not cry, or get complicated, or hang around after the orange juice and the croissant.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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