So what are you doing now and will you still leave the country?” someone asked me via email last week. I get tons of email every day, and twice as many through Messenger in my Facebook. That’s why I tell people to send me emails because they stay there. The ones on Messenger get buried, […]
5 December 2020 Philippine Star It was the summer of 2018 and I had just arrived in Los Angeles, California, after two weeks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Middlebury College, Vermont. I lived with my sister for a week and met some of my friends who lived in LA. That day, Vida and […]
Philippine Star 12 December 2020 I’ve been home for three months and know that this would be the bleakest Christmas for many Filipinos, perhaps since the Second World War. I see people of all ages begging on the streets, shoppers buying only the most essential items [food and medicines], and I feel the taste of […]
I am continuing the Q and A that the international press has been asking me about my novel, Riverrun, which will be published by Penguin Books South East Asia this month. Q: The novel covers the 60s to the 80s. How much of the Philippine LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, transgender and queer] experience has […]
My novel, ‘Riverrun,’ is now being printed by Penguin South East Asia. Printed copies will be sold in Asia while e-copies will be sold in the rest of the world. I have been fielding questions from the international press about the book. Here are the answers to the flurry of queries, telescoped as an FAQ […]
Being a foreign student in the United Kingdom meant living on the proverbial shoestring. Along with the Malaysian and Singaporean students in Muirhead Hall at the University of Stirling, I went to the supermarket on our first day. I invited them to come along with me so we could make our most important acquisition—our rice […]
The Philippines is still the third-largest English-speaking country in the world. But more and more, we have to qualify this statement. Does it mean a deep knowledge of English, or functional English just enough to get by? And what does this statement mean – that there is only one kind of English in the world? […]
My little room in Kajang, Malaysia, was filled recently by a deluge of emails from people asking me how could they get published. I asked where, in the Philippines or overseas? Nowadays, you could easily publish yourself online, or publish your book by print-on-demand. All you need is a finished manuscript, a platform, and your […]
In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country involves the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all […]
One of my biggest surprises recently was an email from Penguin Random House South East Asia. They were asking my permission to publish my book, Riverrun: A Novel. I thought it was a hoax, a joke, or a mis-sent email, But I checked the name of the Executive Editor (correct), her email address (correct). An […]
