Aotearotica's Volume Six is hot off the press, and as guest editor, I was invited to select diverse New Zealand voices to include in this volume. Poets Elsa Valmidiano and Ivy Alvarez contributed work, and to complete this special section, I added my own erotic short story. In my introduction, I wrote about Filipino erotica, and about how erotic writing, within the Filipino context, is an inherently political act. Order your copies here. 

I am happy to share that an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, People We Trust, appears in TAYO Literary Magazine's Issue Eight. Entitled "Learning to Shoot", this excerpt has a Filipina NPA revolutionary contemplating her time as an assassin while waiting to give birth in her wealthy parents' home. You can read the excerpt here, and the full issue here. 

My first byline for the year is an article I wrote about the Filipino food scene in Wellington, New Zealand. I truly feel that Filipino food in Wellington (and in New Zealand, in general) is having its moment, and I wanted to talk to the chefs in my city who are bravely introducing Filipino food to a mainstream Kiwi audience. For this I got to talk to a restauranteur, an ensaymada baker and his supportive wife, and a patisserie chef specializing in sans rivals, and I also got to taste their creations. It was a delightful experience, and I'm glad that VICE NZ gave this article a home. You can read it here. 

This is a very late post, but better late than never: I am happy to share that my late father's essay, "Nashville", was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the Shanghai Literary Review. "Nashville" appears in Issue Three of the magazine which is available for purchase on their website, and will also be available online in the near future. Thank you to the editors of Shanghai Literary Review for thinking of my dad's work!  

This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that The New Filipino Kitchen, where both my father and I appear, has been selected as a favorite cookbook of 2018 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Prior to this recognition, the anthology/cookbook has received some well-deserved buzz from Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, among other places. We have just received our complimentary copies in the mail, so I can personally attest that the book lives up to the hype! You can read the full review from SFChronicle ​here and get your own copy (which would also make the perfect Christmas present for a friend or loved one) here. 

I am pleased to announce that I will be an artist-in-residence for six weeks at the KHN Center for the Arts in Nebraska in the spring of 2019. They previously hosted me for four weeks in 2012, and I loved the experience (I wrote the beginnings of my first novel during that period) so I decided to reapply this year, after finishing my PhD. I plan to spend those six weeks writing more stories about Filipinos in New Zealand and Texas, and hopefully the beginnings of a new novel. More about my upcoming residency here, on their website. 

After experiencing victim-blaming and invalidation from a Filipino student club in New Zealand when I shared with them my essay entitled "My 'Get Out' moment as an overseas student", I decided to use my anger productively by writing about the incident, explaining how it's a perfect example of internalized racism and self-inflicted microaggression. Entitled "When One's Anger is Justified, but Silenced: Tone Policing in Filipino immigrant Groups", my essay has found a home in the ANGER issue of Brain Mill Press's Voices Series. The purpose of this issue, according to the editors, is "to showcase essays and poetry featuring well-aimed anger from femme writers, writers of color, LGBTQIA+ writers, First Nations writers, and disabled writers". I'm honored to have my work included in such an important series. I would love to thank the editors for allowing my voice (and anger) to be heard! You can read the essay here, and the full issue here. 
*Update (November 13, 2018): This piece was reprinted in yomyomf.com, an Asian-American pop culture site. 

For New Naratif, I wrote an essay that's part journalism, part memoir, about a landslide in a village near my hometown of Baguio that took around 100 lives last month. Entitled "30 minutes and a World Apart", my essay is about the long-standing economic and cultural divide between Baguio City, where I grew up, and the mining villages that surround it, and how the indigenous peoples who find sustenance in the nearby mines remain invisible to the city's inhabitants. You can read the full essay here, but I highly recommend supporting New Naratif, which provides an important space for stories about Southeast Asia, by buying a subscription to the magazine. 

I have a new essay about the invisible Filipino maids of Crazy Rich Asians up on SBS Life! I'm so glad that this essay did well online (thanks to Filipinos who shared it), since it's an essay I'm quite proud of. 

What bothered me, however, was how the Filipino maids in the movie merely served to signify their masters’ outrageous (and oftentimes celebrated) wealth with their quiet, unobtrusive presence, and were otherwise rendered invisible, both by the camera and by the script.

You can read the piece in its entirety here.