rainy day critiques

The rain didn't stop the LitCritters from having a great time discussing stories at A Different Bookstore last Saturday. With a group of students from Ateneo observing us, we launched into the usual critiques with gusto (also with the usual tangential side discussions on literary issues provoked by the participants). In three hours, we covered 3 of the 4 stories I selected, and I decided to thereafter have only three stories whenever we met at ADB, because the simple truth is that we run of out time (not that we're on a clock; the wonderful people of ADB tell us we can stay as long as we like, but hunger gets the best out of people, especially writers). This means that the last story is moved to the next session (Don Ysidro - sorry Bruce, but we'll get to your wonderful story very soon). Apart from the usual suspects, we had other authors join the talks as well as a surprise appearance from Sarge Lacuesta and Mookie Katigbak. Come on over and join us next time.


photo by Kenneth Yu

(L to R Upper Row: Vin Simbulan, Kate Aton-Osias, Nikki Alfar, me, Elyss Punzalan, Charles Tan, Maryanne Moll, Miggy Escaño, and Ateneo's Monique, Junno and Burger; kneeling: Alex Osias and Andrew Drilon)

Sarj, Sasha Martinez and Nikay Paredes of Katipunan magazine also came over to interview me about spec fic and the LitCritters. The questions were quite interesting, and I remember one about what I thought the role of spec fic was in Philippine literature.

photo by Nikay Paredes