I am this week's guest on Cristina Querrer's Your Artsy Girl Podcast, in which I talk about my journey as a writer in the Philippines, my experiences at the Michener Center's MFA program and at wonderful writing residencies in the US (such as the amazing KHN Center for the Arts, where I began and finished my novel), and how one must make writing central to your life, which sometimes means going to New Zealand for your creative writing PhD. You can listen to our interview here. Cristina Querrer has done a great job lifting up Filipino, Filipino-American, and POC voices on her podcast, so be sure to listen to other episodes from the show here! 

I'm happy to share that my essay, "The Gift of Connection", which originally appeared in New Zealand's takahe Magazine last year, has been reissued in the latest edition of Maganda Magazine, UC Berkeley's student run Filipino-American literary and arts journal. Since my essay is about tango and the immigrant experience, I felt it was a fitting expression of Maganda's current theme, "Indak", which in Tagalog means "to dance in time with the music". I am happy that this essay can reach a wider audience among Filipino-American writers and artists. This is a print-only journal, but my essay can also be read for free on takahe's website.