Butch Dalisay on Filipino Speculative and Genre Fiction Writers

Apologies for the late plugs. Still trying to catch up with the latest in the blogosphere. Won’t be able to catch them all, I’m sure, but I’ll still give it a go.

First off, Butch Dalisay mentions “new kinds of literature” in a paragraph in his Philippine Star column “Animating Philippine Literature“:

This brings me to the emergence and the growing popularity of new kinds of literature in the Philippines—genre fiction, speculative fiction, graphic or comic-book fiction, creative nonfiction, chick lit, performance poetry—all of which offer writers, especially new and young ones, some alternatives to mainstream realism. These genres don’t lack for enthusiastic supporters who will go out of their way to promote their favored schools of writing. One young entrepreneur, Kenneth Yu, took it upon himself to publish the slim but groundbreaking Philippine Genre Stories, now on its fourth issue. A prizewinning novelist, Dean Alfar, leads a group of young writers called Lit Critters, who meet regularly to discuss both local and foreign stories that might help them in their own work. Both Kenneth and Dean have extensive online networks. (And here, the formula seems to be alternative + young + Internet + network.)