ala carte

Ala Carte: Food and Fiction, an anthology I contributed to, will be available soon from Anvil (thanks for heads up, Ian!). The collection's conceit revolves around combining fiction with Filipino recipes. Here's the list of authors found in editors Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Marily Ysip Orosa's antho:

Edna Weisser
Ma. Romina Gonzalez
Corinna Arcellana Nuqui
Margarita Marfori
Alfred Yuson
Susan Evangelista
Carlos Cortes
Linda Ty Casper
Dean Francis Alfar
Jose Dalisay Jr.
Janet Villa
Ian Rosales Casocot
Joel Barraquiel Tan
Marie Aubrey Villaceran
Shirlie Mae Mamaril Choe
Reine Arcache Melvin
Erma M. Cuizon
Veronica Montes
Brian Ascalon Roley
Nadine Sarreal
Erwin Cabucos
Edgar Poma
Oscar Penaranda
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Marily Ysip Orosa

From the Introduction to the collection:

...Marily and I share a love for fiction primarily because stories reflect the soul or culture of people. So does food and we thought combining stories and recipes in one book would reveal Filipino culture in a unique manner and would invite lovers of both stories and food to take a look at our delectable collection...

...When the stories started coming in, we were surprised to see that the topic of food had triggered some serious stories. We quickly realized that food and eating bring back memories of families and friends, and relationships are always complex. The stories we finally selected were by writers from America, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, France, and Germany. The majority of the contributors are published writers who are well-known in the literary and academic communities...

...The stories of Dean Francis Alfar and Ian Rosales Casocot, combine magic-realism and slapstick. Alfar's Sabados Con Fray Villalobos relates the Spanish friar's attempts to win the hearts of Filipino Indios although some Indios have other ideas. Casocot's Pedro and the Chickens is about the blossoming of a romance in the town of Dumaguete and the accompanying strange events that happen to the town's chickens...

Sabados Con Fray Villalobos is speculative fiction from my Hinirang cycle that combines horror, fantasy and magic realism, along with recipes for pancit luglug, dinuguan, adobo, and pinakbet.