philippine speculative fiction vol. 1: bios and teasers
With the book launching on Saturday (to which, again, everyone is cordially invited), I thought I'd share the roll call of the authors and a brief teaser of their contribution, in the order they appear in the book. Sorry, I didn't include any online links.
Cyan Abad-Jugo took her Master's in Children's Literature at Simmons College, Boston, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. Her first book, Father and Daughter: the figures of our speech (Anvil Publishing, 1996), was a joint project with her father, Gemino H. Abad. Her second book, Sweet Summer and Other Stories, was published by the UP Press (2004). Her children's story "Behind The Old Aparador" won second place at the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2003, and will soon be published by Anvil. Her work has appeared in the Junior Inquirer, Flip Magazine, Pulp, the Philippine Free Press, and Jam (a cool comics digest for girls).
In "Jan's Door," a dissatisfied young man befriends a mysterious door painter and learns the hard truth behind beginning anew.
Tyron Caliente is the pseudonym of a research and development engineer who seems to have too much time on his hands when he should be analyzing statistical data and design issues. Proof of this is his conception of a series of e-books compiling the best of the Philippine blogosphere, released (almost) regularly beginning April 2005. His publications include emotionally-charged technical paper thrillers such as “Understanding the Mechanism of Wirebond-Related Blown-up Test Failures in Flash Packages” and “Delamination in Very Thin, Fine-Pitched Ball Grid Array Packages.” He was previously the editor-in-chief of a factory newsletter and is currently a contributor to a company magazine. He will be relinquishing his position as grammar police of the engineering department after clipping the last stray apostrophe inside a process development report.
“The Doppler Effect,” Caliente’s first fiction publication, looks at how the laws of physics sometimes reflect human relationships.
Andrew Drilon is mostly known for his comic book work, having won the 2002 Likha Comics Making Contest and contributed to the National Book Award-winning Siglo: Freedom. He has two self-published ashcans, The Germinator and Subwhere, and has also appeared in Grafic Magazine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Pugad Literary Magazine, Hilites, K.I.A., and hey, comics! His most recent comics work can be found in Siglo: Passion and Project: Hero, which he co-edited with Elbert Or. Upcoming works include Whapak! and Funky Monkey Comics.
“Tendresse,” a coming-of-age story in the grand tradition of Dali and Dada, is Drilon’s first published work of fiction.
Francezca C. Kwe's fiction has been published in the Philippine Free Press, the Sunday Times, Tomas, Dapitan, and OIST magazine. She has received the USTetika award and the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her work, and has been a fellow for fiction in four national writers’ workshops. She is currently completing her first collection of short stories and editing an anthology of contemporary fiction with Ian Rosales Casocot.
A shorter version of “Lovelore” first appeared in the Philippine Free Press.
Nikki Alfar has been a flight attendant, a bank manager, a magazine editor, a radio newscaster, an office administrator, and a copywriter. Her stories and articles have appeared in The Philippine Star and the magazines Smart Parenting, Stuff, milk, Seventeen, and Jam. She has written more comic books than she is readily able to remember, and edited the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award-winning anthology Isaw, atbp. She has also won a number of Anvil awards for her copywriting, as well as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story for children, “Menggay’s Magical Chicken”. Alfar runs a content development firm and an online weblog out of the home she shares with her husband and their three-year-old daughter Sage.
“EmberWild” is a classically-told fantasy set in an imaginary world, both fresh and familiar to perceptive readers.
Joseph Nacino is the daytime online Internet editor for philstar.com. Being an inveterate reader of science fiction and fantasy, the publication of his first story in a Filipino anthology of speculative fiction is a tremendous source of fanboy glee for him. Hopefully, this isn't his last.
“Walking Backwards,” which Nacino describes as “a historiographical soft SF story ,“ looks into the ties that bind a young man to his past as well as his future.
Angelo R. Lacuesta was born in 1970. His first book, Life Before X and Other Stories, won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award as well as the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award. He is a recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature and his fiction has appeared in the Philippine Free Press, The Best Philippine Short Stories, and Future Shock: prose, an edition of Sands and Coral.
“New Wave Days” is from his second collection of short fiction, White Elephant: Stories.
Dean Francis Alfar’s plays have been performed in venues across the country, while his articles and fiction have been published both locally and abroad, most recently in Rabid Transit: Menagerie. His writing awards include eight Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award for the acclaimed graphic novel Siglo: Freedom. His first novel Salamanca won the Grand Prize for Novel in the Palancas this year and is scheduled for publication by the Ateneo Press. Alfar is a comic book creator (The Lost, ab ovo, and the grafiction anthology Siglo: Passion, which he co-edited) and blogger. He is also an entrepreneur — running two businesses, the pet store Petty Pets and the integrated marketing company Kestrel IMC —a s well as a devoted husband and father to his wife Nikki and their daughter Sage.
“L’Aquilone du Estrellas” first appeared in Strange Horizons and subsequently in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Seventeenth Annual Collection. As “The Kite of Stars”, it received the Don Carlos Palanca Award for One-Act Play.
Jay Steven Uy Anyong has been a roadie on a Hello Kitty mall tour, sold miniature Space Orks to underaged children, and successfully convinced an American to keep up with house payments while in the middle of an earthquake. His roleplaying game articles have appeared in Seeker magazine. An active member of the Alliance of Eclectic Gamers and Interactive Storytellers (AEGIS), Jay is often found holding pen-and-paper roleplaying games for newbies, or over at his blog.
”The Coward's Quest,” Anyong’s first published work, is about Garret, the Coward of Silver Vale, and a Mysterious Stranger (tm) who tries to convince him to undertake a quest to Save the World (tm).
Pauline Orendain dabbles in photography, copywriting, web and graphic design, parenting, and fiction. Her articles and photos have been published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Manila Times, and The Philippine Star. Currently, she is most comfortable foraging nuts and berries and unearthing arrowheads, peyote buttons, and ancient cooking pits in the American wilderness with her husband Dino and their four-year-old son, Dylan.
”Room Three” shows what happens after the bell tolls... and before the gates open.
Gabriela Lee received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2005 from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, where she majored in Creative Writing. She has been published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, the Philippine Free Press, and The Literary Apprentice. She has been a Fellow for Poetry in English at the Iligan, Dumaguete, and UP National Writers’ Workshops. She also has a children's book entitled La-on and the Seven-Headed Dragon, published by Adarna House, which she co-wrote with her mother. Lee received the Amelia Lapena Bonifacio Literary Award for her fiction and poetry. She has been a member of the UP Writers’ Club and UP Graphic Arts in Literature (GRAIL).
A unique twist on a deceptively standard break-up plot, “Instructions on How to Disappear” captures a woman midway towards shattering.
Ian Rosales Casocot’s short stories and essays have been published in The Sunday Times, Sands and Coral, Dapitan, Tomas, the Philippine Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, SunStar Bacolod, and MetroPost. He writes a weekly column, “The Spy in the Sandwich,” for StarLife Magazine of the Visayan Daily Star, and maintains A Survey of Philippine Literature, a comprehensive website resource on Filipino writing and literary criticism. Based in Dumaguete City, he has won two Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and an NVM Gonzalez Prize for his fiction, and was chosen as one of the authors for the UBOD New Writers Series 2003 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
In “The Pepe Report,” Casocot turns the spotlight on the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal, with startling results.
Vincent Michael Simbulan is a two-time Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Awardee for his anthologies, Isaw, Atbp. and Siglo: Freedom. He is the co-founder of Quest Ventures, which is both a publishing house and a coalition of Filipino comic book creators. His work has appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Project: Hero, and the magazines Stuff and Guide. Siglo: Passion, co-edited with Dean Francis Alfar, is his latest comic book anthology. He is in the process of editing a collection of stories about dragons, due in 2006.
“In the Arms of Beishu”, a tale about longing for one’s homeland, is set in the time of the Spanish rule over the Philippines. It marks Simbulan’s first published work of short fiction.
J. Pocholo Martin B. Goitia was born on Halloween 22 years ago. He is currently a journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas and is the editor of one of the college magazines and its adjacent literary portfolio. He is a fellow and former president of the Thomasian Writers’ Guild and attended the 3rd UST National Writers’ Workshop a couple of years ago. He claims to being tempted by the allure of jumping on the call center band wagon one of these days, in order to earn the cash to buy incredibly expensive imported novels, graphic or otherwise, at his leisure. He is currently working on and off on his first novel.
“An Introduction to The Luminescent,” a look into the Philippines of tomorrow and the people who live in it, is Goitia’s first published work outside of UST.
Khavn is an internationally-awarded filmmaker whose explosive forays into fiction and poetry are not for the faint of heart. His personal anthology, Ultraviolins: This is not a book by Khavn, collects his poetry, fiction, essays, plays, and screenplays; and is available from UP Press.
“The Family That Eats Soil,” a surreal tale, won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in the Short Story in Filipino category, and became a film. It was translated by Singapore-based Mayo Uno Martin, the author of Babel—a volume of poetry published by High Chair—and producer of the spokenword album Uniberso: New Pinoy Poets Calling.
Sean Uy has been writing since he was 12 years old, and has explored a broad selection of genres in the span of a largely unheralded writing career. He has been published in Singapore's Eggplant magazine, and has done work with characters and settings for Anito: Defend a Land Enraged, the first entirely Filipino-made computer game.
In “Regiment,” five men returning to their homeland discover that there is more to the strange old woman they meet on the way, just as she knows that there is more to them than they expect.
K. Mandigma is 25 years old and works in Makati City as a researcher. A self-confessed bibliophile, Mandigma professes to be more of a reader than a writer, experiencing confused literary ambitions.
“The Catalogue of the Damned”, a story deliciously difficult to categorize, marks Mandigma’s first publication.
Douglas L. Candano graduated in 2005 from the Ateneo de Manila University, where he was awarded the Development Studies Departmental Award and the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for Fiction. A former associate editor of Heights, Ateneo’s official literary publication and organization, he has been awarded fellowships to the Ateneo-Heights and Ateneo National Writers’ Workshops. He is a recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature; and his stories and essays have been published in Heights, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star. He is currently conceptualizing his first novel, while doing consultancy work for a Canadian International Development Agency project.
”The Life and Death of Hermes Uy,” which combines world mythology, an alternative Chinese-Filipino history, and pop-culture, first appeared in Heights.
A great big "thank you" again to all these authors, as well to everyone who submitted stories for consideration. I'm certain that by this time next year, we'll have an even more fantastic collection.
Cyan Abad-Jugo took her Master's in Children's Literature at Simmons College, Boston, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. Her first book, Father and Daughter: the figures of our speech (Anvil Publishing, 1996), was a joint project with her father, Gemino H. Abad. Her second book, Sweet Summer and Other Stories, was published by the UP Press (2004). Her children's story "Behind The Old Aparador" won second place at the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2003, and will soon be published by Anvil. Her work has appeared in the Junior Inquirer, Flip Magazine, Pulp, the Philippine Free Press, and Jam (a cool comics digest for girls).
In "Jan's Door," a dissatisfied young man befriends a mysterious door painter and learns the hard truth behind beginning anew.
Tyron Caliente is the pseudonym of a research and development engineer who seems to have too much time on his hands when he should be analyzing statistical data and design issues. Proof of this is his conception of a series of e-books compiling the best of the Philippine blogosphere, released (almost) regularly beginning April 2005. His publications include emotionally-charged technical paper thrillers such as “Understanding the Mechanism of Wirebond-Related Blown-up Test Failures in Flash Packages” and “Delamination in Very Thin, Fine-Pitched Ball Grid Array Packages.” He was previously the editor-in-chief of a factory newsletter and is currently a contributor to a company magazine. He will be relinquishing his position as grammar police of the engineering department after clipping the last stray apostrophe inside a process development report.
“The Doppler Effect,” Caliente’s first fiction publication, looks at how the laws of physics sometimes reflect human relationships.
Andrew Drilon is mostly known for his comic book work, having won the 2002 Likha Comics Making Contest and contributed to the National Book Award-winning Siglo: Freedom. He has two self-published ashcans, The Germinator and Subwhere, and has also appeared in Grafic Magazine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Pugad Literary Magazine, Hilites, K.I.A., and hey, comics! His most recent comics work can be found in Siglo: Passion and Project: Hero, which he co-edited with Elbert Or. Upcoming works include Whapak! and Funky Monkey Comics.
“Tendresse,” a coming-of-age story in the grand tradition of Dali and Dada, is Drilon’s first published work of fiction.
Francezca C. Kwe's fiction has been published in the Philippine Free Press, the Sunday Times, Tomas, Dapitan, and OIST magazine. She has received the USTetika award and the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her work, and has been a fellow for fiction in four national writers’ workshops. She is currently completing her first collection of short stories and editing an anthology of contemporary fiction with Ian Rosales Casocot.
A shorter version of “Lovelore” first appeared in the Philippine Free Press.
Nikki Alfar has been a flight attendant, a bank manager, a magazine editor, a radio newscaster, an office administrator, and a copywriter. Her stories and articles have appeared in The Philippine Star and the magazines Smart Parenting, Stuff, milk, Seventeen, and Jam. She has written more comic books than she is readily able to remember, and edited the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award-winning anthology Isaw, atbp. She has also won a number of Anvil awards for her copywriting, as well as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story for children, “Menggay’s Magical Chicken”. Alfar runs a content development firm and an online weblog out of the home she shares with her husband and their three-year-old daughter Sage.
“EmberWild” is a classically-told fantasy set in an imaginary world, both fresh and familiar to perceptive readers.
Joseph Nacino is the daytime online Internet editor for philstar.com. Being an inveterate reader of science fiction and fantasy, the publication of his first story in a Filipino anthology of speculative fiction is a tremendous source of fanboy glee for him. Hopefully, this isn't his last.
“Walking Backwards,” which Nacino describes as “a historiographical soft SF story ,“ looks into the ties that bind a young man to his past as well as his future.
Angelo R. Lacuesta was born in 1970. His first book, Life Before X and Other Stories, won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award as well as the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award. He is a recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature and his fiction has appeared in the Philippine Free Press, The Best Philippine Short Stories, and Future Shock: prose, an edition of Sands and Coral.
“New Wave Days” is from his second collection of short fiction, White Elephant: Stories.
Dean Francis Alfar’s plays have been performed in venues across the country, while his articles and fiction have been published both locally and abroad, most recently in Rabid Transit: Menagerie. His writing awards include eight Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award for the acclaimed graphic novel Siglo: Freedom. His first novel Salamanca won the Grand Prize for Novel in the Palancas this year and is scheduled for publication by the Ateneo Press. Alfar is a comic book creator (The Lost, ab ovo, and the grafiction anthology Siglo: Passion, which he co-edited) and blogger. He is also an entrepreneur — running two businesses, the pet store Petty Pets and the integrated marketing company Kestrel IMC —a s well as a devoted husband and father to his wife Nikki and their daughter Sage.
“L’Aquilone du Estrellas” first appeared in Strange Horizons and subsequently in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Seventeenth Annual Collection. As “The Kite of Stars”, it received the Don Carlos Palanca Award for One-Act Play.
Jay Steven Uy Anyong has been a roadie on a Hello Kitty mall tour, sold miniature Space Orks to underaged children, and successfully convinced an American to keep up with house payments while in the middle of an earthquake. His roleplaying game articles have appeared in Seeker magazine. An active member of the Alliance of Eclectic Gamers and Interactive Storytellers (AEGIS), Jay is often found holding pen-and-paper roleplaying games for newbies, or over at his blog.
”The Coward's Quest,” Anyong’s first published work, is about Garret, the Coward of Silver Vale, and a Mysterious Stranger (tm) who tries to convince him to undertake a quest to Save the World (tm).
Pauline Orendain dabbles in photography, copywriting, web and graphic design, parenting, and fiction. Her articles and photos have been published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Manila Times, and The Philippine Star. Currently, she is most comfortable foraging nuts and berries and unearthing arrowheads, peyote buttons, and ancient cooking pits in the American wilderness with her husband Dino and their four-year-old son, Dylan.
”Room Three” shows what happens after the bell tolls... and before the gates open.
Gabriela Lee received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2005 from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, where she majored in Creative Writing. She has been published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, the Philippine Free Press, and The Literary Apprentice. She has been a Fellow for Poetry in English at the Iligan, Dumaguete, and UP National Writers’ Workshops. She also has a children's book entitled La-on and the Seven-Headed Dragon, published by Adarna House, which she co-wrote with her mother. Lee received the Amelia Lapena Bonifacio Literary Award for her fiction and poetry. She has been a member of the UP Writers’ Club and UP Graphic Arts in Literature (GRAIL).
A unique twist on a deceptively standard break-up plot, “Instructions on How to Disappear” captures a woman midway towards shattering.
Ian Rosales Casocot’s short stories and essays have been published in The Sunday Times, Sands and Coral, Dapitan, Tomas, the Philippine Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, SunStar Bacolod, and MetroPost. He writes a weekly column, “The Spy in the Sandwich,” for StarLife Magazine of the Visayan Daily Star, and maintains A Survey of Philippine Literature, a comprehensive website resource on Filipino writing and literary criticism. Based in Dumaguete City, he has won two Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and an NVM Gonzalez Prize for his fiction, and was chosen as one of the authors for the UBOD New Writers Series 2003 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
In “The Pepe Report,” Casocot turns the spotlight on the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal, with startling results.
Vincent Michael Simbulan is a two-time Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Awardee for his anthologies, Isaw, Atbp. and Siglo: Freedom. He is the co-founder of Quest Ventures, which is both a publishing house and a coalition of Filipino comic book creators. His work has appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Project: Hero, and the magazines Stuff and Guide. Siglo: Passion, co-edited with Dean Francis Alfar, is his latest comic book anthology. He is in the process of editing a collection of stories about dragons, due in 2006.
“In the Arms of Beishu”, a tale about longing for one’s homeland, is set in the time of the Spanish rule over the Philippines. It marks Simbulan’s first published work of short fiction.
J. Pocholo Martin B. Goitia was born on Halloween 22 years ago. He is currently a journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas and is the editor of one of the college magazines and its adjacent literary portfolio. He is a fellow and former president of the Thomasian Writers’ Guild and attended the 3rd UST National Writers’ Workshop a couple of years ago. He claims to being tempted by the allure of jumping on the call center band wagon one of these days, in order to earn the cash to buy incredibly expensive imported novels, graphic or otherwise, at his leisure. He is currently working on and off on his first novel.
“An Introduction to The Luminescent,” a look into the Philippines of tomorrow and the people who live in it, is Goitia’s first published work outside of UST.
Khavn is an internationally-awarded filmmaker whose explosive forays into fiction and poetry are not for the faint of heart. His personal anthology, Ultraviolins: This is not a book by Khavn, collects his poetry, fiction, essays, plays, and screenplays; and is available from UP Press.
“The Family That Eats Soil,” a surreal tale, won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in the Short Story in Filipino category, and became a film. It was translated by Singapore-based Mayo Uno Martin, the author of Babel—a volume of poetry published by High Chair—and producer of the spokenword album Uniberso: New Pinoy Poets Calling.
Sean Uy has been writing since he was 12 years old, and has explored a broad selection of genres in the span of a largely unheralded writing career. He has been published in Singapore's Eggplant magazine, and has done work with characters and settings for Anito: Defend a Land Enraged, the first entirely Filipino-made computer game.
In “Regiment,” five men returning to their homeland discover that there is more to the strange old woman they meet on the way, just as she knows that there is more to them than they expect.
K. Mandigma is 25 years old and works in Makati City as a researcher. A self-confessed bibliophile, Mandigma professes to be more of a reader than a writer, experiencing confused literary ambitions.
“The Catalogue of the Damned”, a story deliciously difficult to categorize, marks Mandigma’s first publication.
Douglas L. Candano graduated in 2005 from the Ateneo de Manila University, where he was awarded the Development Studies Departmental Award and the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for Fiction. A former associate editor of Heights, Ateneo’s official literary publication and organization, he has been awarded fellowships to the Ateneo-Heights and Ateneo National Writers’ Workshops. He is a recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature; and his stories and essays have been published in Heights, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star. He is currently conceptualizing his first novel, while doing consultancy work for a Canadian International Development Agency project.
”The Life and Death of Hermes Uy,” which combines world mythology, an alternative Chinese-Filipino history, and pop-culture, first appeared in Heights.
A great big "thank you" again to all these authors, as well to everyone who submitted stories for consideration. I'm certain that by this time next year, we'll have an even more fantastic collection.
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2:44 PM
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