LitCrit Manila 2011 Updates

For the schedule, you can check here:


LitCrit Session Dates (Last Saturday of each month at 2:00 PM):

Jun 25, 2011
Jul 30, 2011
Aug 27, 2011
Sep 24, 2011
Oct 29, 2011
Nov 26, 2011

Venue: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (mostly at Robinson's Galleria)

For the primer, you can read it here. Also an important article to read is "Explaining Why The Author Is Dead for Face-to-Face Sessions".

The June readings are:

"Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling
"I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno" by Vylar Kaftan
"Angry Birds – Letters from the Front Lines" by Chris Riebschlage

The Lit Critters 2007/11/17

I would have uploaded this sooner but well, here it is:

• Lit Critters 2007/11/17 (104:59, 48 MB)
  

We tackled "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford, "Legions in Time" by Michael Swanwick, and "Lord Peter Midnight and the Goblin King" by Chris Roberson.

This weekend's Lit Critters session, December 1, 2007, will be the last session for the year. It'll be at 4 pm at A Different Bookstore, Serendra. For more information, visit The Lit Critters Google Group.

Stories This Week:

"Firebird" by R. Robertson y Garcia
"'Tis the Season" by China Mieville
"John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner" by Susanna Clarke

Displaced Lit Critters

I managed to attend yesterday's Lit Critters session... except A Different Bookstore was unavailable at the time so we ended up perusing the shelves of Fully Booked. Some of the attendees however managed to find us so the Lit Critters started the session at Figaro.

The stories discussed were:

"Klockwerk's Heart" by Anna Tambour
"The First Sense" by Nadine Gordimer
"A Tranquil Star" by Primo Levi

We also began with a discussion as to why Dean doesn't like the phrase "I like the conceit" and then later on moved on to the topic of writing for your own sake or writing for an audience. As for my self-incriminating statements, I will speak no more.

Here's a copy of the recording:

Lit Critters November 3, 2007 (44 MB, 97:11 minutes)

The Lit Critters and Philippine Genre Stories

It took me quite some time to upload this but here it is, the mp3 of last Saturday's Lit Critters session that tackled the stories from Philippine Genre Stories. This is the longest Lit Crit session yet at 3 hours (and it's a 75 MB download) and it's interesting to witness the dynamic between the Lit Critters and the PGS writers (alas, some of my jokes didn't work as it took some time before Kyu processed my rebuttal of "I'm not that old!" when he asked if I had seen the Twilight Zone episode with the devil in it). Personally, I'm just grateful that some people really enjoyed my story, "The Devil is in the Details". But there's always room for improvement, and I promised Elyss that I wouldn't reveal the location of her blog (ooops!), so I'll end my entry at that.

• Lit Crit at Serendra on 2007/10/20 (75 MB)

Philippine Genre Stories at LitCritters

I'd just like to invite everyone to join the upcoming LitCritters this Saturday, October 20, 4 pm, at A Different Bookstore Serendra as they tackle three stories from the latest issue of Digest of Philippine Genre Stories:

Tuko by Miguel Escano
Twinspeak by Elyss Punsalan
The Devil is in the Details by Charles Tan

Lit Critters Last September 22, 2007

This would have come sooner but work kept me preoccupied. Anyway, here's last weekend's recording of the Lit Critters session in A Different Bookstore, Serendra. We were pressed for time so we only tackled Bienvenido Santos's The Day the Dancers Came but there was a side trek into how every author's work is political (not in the government sense but rather that everyone has an agenda they're promoting). I also tweaked the audio so that you could hear Andrew and Kristel better, who were both far from the mic.

• Lit Critters September 22, 2007 (26 MB, 56:10)

Lit Critters Last September 8, 2007

I was supposed to manage a photo shoot last Saturday but the talent backed out at the last minute. I spent the time wandering around Serendra and it never ceases to amaze me how ambiance can make a difference.

While browsing through the books of Madeleine L'Engle, I find out from Dean that the author has died. One of the more mainstream SF works has been A Wrinkle in Time and as Dean puts it, it's a huge tragedy whenever an author dies for that means no more new stories are told. The metaphor I associate with that loss is the demise of a god. Writers are, in many ways, creators that breathe life into paper. (But I'll be honest. News of her death affects people like Zarah and Kyu more. The other tragedy here is that I haven't yet read any of the author's work. Perhaps now is a good time to start.)

The Lit Critters discussed three stories last Saturday: Door 59 by F.H. Batacan, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang, and Private Detective Molly by AB Goelman. I was so engrossed with Dean's introduction that I forgot to turn on the tape recorder. The first story we tackled was The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate and the only time I managed to hit "record" was when Dean asked me my opinions of the story (luckily for you and perhaps unfortunately for me, I was the first person he called). Here's a recording of the last Lit Crit session which is nearly two hours long (51 MB). The sound quality isn't the best so you might want to increase the volume of your speakers. Listening to a recording however is no dialogue so join the mailing list and participate in the discussion (and hopefully attend the next Lit Crit session).

EDIT: Fixed the mp3 link.