Writers & Writing
12 stories
Collected Irritations
A reader once wished my essays were collected in one book so she could hate everything in one place. Her wish is my command.
Why I Am Not A Normal Writer
As the paper I write for marks its 40th anniversary, it seems only fitting to look back at some of the highlights from this gloriously bonkers career.
Pula ang Kulay ng Katapusan
Bakit pula? A foreword to Doktor Karayom’s book of raw, anatomical musings, drawn somewhere between bangungot and alaala.
The Art of Drowning in Visions
Glenn Bautista drew Rizal’s monument from a line by line transcription of his 39 poems, then vanished for 15 years. On the artist we forgot.
Miguel Syjuco & the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world will know as true
The Ilustrado novelist on disinformation, power, and who gets to tell the stories the world will know as true, from a desk of literary detritus.
The solitary saga of Manong Frankie
‘When you write,’ Manong Frankie said in a voice that could fell ancient trees, ‘it’s not just with words.’ There is a trail of a life in every word.
How a bullfrog keeps Jaime Laya awake when it rains
Dr. Jaime Laya on the frogs he had shipped in from the Candaba swamp, the somber santos and vintage narra indoors, and the first sentence he labors over.
Requiem for Lady Polyester
Poets mandate their own immortality. A protege remembers Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, UST’s Lady Polyester, over Leonard Cohen and beer.
Dance the disco corrosion
A commencement address for the doomed: writer’s block, Eva Longoria as a sign of the apocalypse, and one ordinary Monday that broke a heart.
The brats of Beat
Kerouac with Steve Allen on piano, Ginsberg howling, Burroughs on a hip-hop record. The spoken-word albums of the Beats, for freaky times.
Look it up… in the fictionary
Neil Gaiman says myths are resilient. Here are definitions for words that do not exist: womanhood, fashion, fine dining, numbers, scientists.
Hello blankness, my old friend
The blank page as a death shroud, a caterpillar condominium at a battle of the bands, and a beauty queen on a jeepney who broke the spell.