A son of Manila, my late father owned an imposing hardcover brown volume which he treasured and encouraged his teenaged children to read. We used the busyness of youth as an excuse not to when really, we were intimidated by its thickness. The book has mysteriously vanished, to our belated sorrow. So it was with… Read More Manila, My Manila: Glories of the Past Resurrected
Author Laurel Flores Fantauzzo describes this book as the product of a haunting. The 2009 murders of film journalists Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc moved her so deeply that she spent the next six years (eight with revisions) writing about the couple. What was originally meant as an academic thesis became a finalist in the… Read More The First Impulse: Immortalizing Lives and Loves
F.H. Batacan’s newest book comes 26 years after she wrote the award-winning novel Smaller and Smaller Circles, which was hailed as a crime classic and turned into a 2017 film starring Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero. Set in the same Manila as her previous book, the short story collection manages to be both very similar… Read More Accidents Happen: Angry Stories that Thirst for Justice
Baguio is awash with tourists and Manileños all bundled up in Uniqlo Heattech this Christmas and New Year season. There may be another reason for the cold atmosphere: the chill of the supernatural. The Baguio depicted in OHA by Krie R. Lopez is one peopled by ghosts. The book starts with a teenager’s death from… Read More OHA Gives A Voice to Baguio’s Ghosts
Podium Mall’s usually quiet hallways echoed with screams of tired trick-or-treating children that Saturday (be honest; if we were dolled up as zombies, painted head to toe in corpse-white make-up to boot, and compelled to traipse up and down five floors asking store owners for candy, we’d probably be whining our heads off as well).… Read More Haunted Reads: Filipino Horror Writers Speak About Facing Our Fears
Cat Dellosa is the author of The Summer of Letting Go, For the Win, and many other books. Her contemporary works are famous for their ability to draw tears of both laughter and deep emotion from her readers. Ex Libris Philippines interviewed her about her biggest literary influences. You started out as a games journalist… Read More Catherine Dellosa: Gamester and Wordsmith
“Even God can be felt in the heat of the sun or the bliss of the ocean. But what happens to your crypto when the circuits or blockchains are broken? What happens when the power goes out?” Sci-fi books are scarily prophetic. From the modern physics-defying vehicles and gadgets we take for granted, to the… Read More “God’s Ashes” is Sci-Fi with a Call to Action
We all write in our everyday lives. We just write different things. Whether it’s enigmatic Facebook posts set to public but targeting one person in particular, a teacher’s lesson plans, a corporate girlie’s outlines for client pitches, or marketing strategies, there’s something almost magical about the transferring of abstract thought onto a blank page, whether… Read More How to Write: A Workshop by Penguin SEA Pinay Authors
In a nation rich with artists and artistry (the pantheon of National Artists that students study number eighty-six as of today), we have lost one of our best. There are many of us who claimed, within his lifetime, that Floy Quintos (director, playwright, and above all, a wonderful human being) is/ was well deserving of… Read More An Artist for the Nation : Floy Quintos
Now that THE PREYING BIRDS (Mga Ibong Mandaragit) by Amado V. Hernandez has been translated into English by Danton Remoto for Penguin Random House SEA in 2022, this reader finally got the chance to read a book I’ve been hearing about for so long, by an author recognized as a National Artist for Literature. What… Read More The Preying Birds (Mga Ibong Mandaragit) is a Prayer Across Generations
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