Memory's fiction

LITRO magazine of New York published my story, "The Snake," on Jan. 29, 2021. They also did a great interview with me. I'm sharing this with readers so they can get an insight into the art of fiction.

I have been writing fiction since my university days in the early 1980s. My first teacher was my late professor Emmanuel Torres at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University. Professor Torres went to school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a classmate of Robert Bly, who allegedly brought a snake to school one day, so that Paul Engle, the professor, and all his other classmates could hardly say anything negative about Robert Bly's poem. I was also lucky to have National Artist Edith L. Tiempo as a mentor in fiction-writing at the Silliman University Writers' Workshop. She also studied at the Iowa Writers' Workshop under Robert Penn Warren. I attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2019 and was lucky to be taught fiction writing by the Tiphanie Yanique. I also write poetry; in fact, I have three books of poems that have won awards in the Philippines. I am most prolific in writing essays. I have been writing columns for the Philippine press since 1990. I have published seven books of essays.