I'm honored to have my Day One Kindle Single chapbook, Playing With Dolls, listed in Grace Talusan's 6 New Books From Diverse Voices in Vela Magazine. About Playing With Dolls she writes:

​"Monica Macansantos is an exciting voice in literature. Playing with Dolls, a Kindle Single, follows a young woman from a wealthy Filipino family as this family’s ties begin to unravel. The relationship between the father and daughter is fascinating, but Macansantos also pays attention to the family’s helpers, people who are an integral part of the family’s daily life, but not often visible in literature. Macansantos’s essay, “Becoming A Writer: The Silences We Write Against,” published in TAYO Literary Magazine last year, recently was distinguished on the notable list in Best American Essays 2016."

You can read the full list, featuring other amazing diverse authors of color, here. 

(Illustration: Ant Sang, from Aotearotica via The Wireless)
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In her interview with New Zealand's The Wireless, Laura Borrowdale, editor of Aotearotica, uses my story, "Nina", to eloquently illustrate the differences between pornography and erotica. This is what she has to say: 

For me, a lot of what distinguishes us [from porn] is the taste and the quality. It’s really important that … the characters are behaving in a reasonable, logical way - the way that you'd expect that character to behave. One of the problems with pornography is the statistics talk about it being increasingly aggressive and degrading towards women, and because it’s pitched at a male audience you end up with images of women being slapped, or choked or pushed around or very aggressively engaged with… But because the women have to respond in a way that shows their enjoyment of that, what happens is you create for people watching it an expectation that that is what women enjoy.
There’s one particular story in Aotearotica called ‘Nina’ by Monica Macansantos in which a woman has a threesome, and parts of it are really pleasurable for her and parts of it aren’t, but you get a real glimpse into what it does for her emotionally. It’s broader than just what happens to her body. I think that’s where we have that difference. It’s a fuller experience than just, "This is what’s happening to a dehumanised body in front of you."

​Thank you for your lovely words, Laura! You can read the full interview here. 

Copies of Aotearotica can also be ordered on their website. 

In Porter Shreve's review of Amazon's Day One journal in SFGate, he gives a brief but positive review of my short story, "Playing With Dolls". Here's an excerpt:

"The annual Best New American Voices Anthology used to be the place to find some of the finest fiction writing emerging out of the MFA workshops, but it ceased publication in 2010. Besides the literary magazines, which have always led the way in discovering fresh talent, Amazon’s Day One, a weekly e-journal featuring short stories and poems from debut writers, is attempting to fill the void.
Recent highlights include “After the Beauties,” by Julia LoFaso, about a tropical island under quarantine after a deadly parasite infects the waters; “Questions I Don’t Ask Bubby,” by Cady Vishniac, about a Holocaust survivor who plans to undergo a risky surgery to restore her youth; “Playing With Dolls,” by Monica Macansantos, about a Filipino family brought to reckoning when the father runs off with the maid; and “Flags and Rafts,” by Cecilia M. Fernandez, about two long-lost lovers, one in Miami, one in Cuba, trying to reunite, with over a hundred miles of shark-infested waters between them. The variety of form, setting, situation and subject matter in Day One is impressive, and the writing is consistently fresh and interesting, challenging the tired criticism that fiction workshops churn out a predictable type of safe, quiet, mannerly story."

More here: www.sfgate.com/books/article/Roundup-of-new-e-books-6926486.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop

Check out a review of my short story, "The Feast of All Souls", which appeared in the 2012 edition of The Masters Review edited by Lauren Groff. Thanks to Ann Graham for reviewing. 
​www.ann-graham.com/2015/06/monica-macansantos-feast-of-all-souls.html