6:00 - 7:00
United States
Uber-mistress of horror litterateurs, Yvette Tan in conversation with Professor Lily Ann Villaraza to discuss her latest short story collection, Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories.
Her second short collection:Two friends adapt in a zombie-infested Angeles City. At Luneta Park, a girl and a young tikbalang begin their journey to save the last moon. A brothel in Poblacion offers an expecting father pleasures he cannot resist. And in the titular story, an American unwittingly purchases a mail-order bride from the mystical island of Siquijor. From stories of youthful charm with supernatural twists, to provocative tales of unassuming humans willingly falling prey to creatures with manicured talons, Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories forms a panoramic view of the Filipino experience—sometimes humorous and touching, oftentimes dark and forbidding.
Tan is one of the Philippines’ most celebrated horror writers. Aside from short fiction collections in English and Tagalog, she’s written a feature film that received nationwide release and co-written a libretto for a ballet that was performed by Ballet Philippines on the main stage of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She was the official scribe of the Manila Biennale in 2018 and her story was the companion piece to the artwork that adorned the Philippine pavilion in the 2021 Frankfurt Book Fair. She co-hosted “Trese After Dark,” the behind-the-scenes companion to the Netflix hit anime “Trese.” She was a creative consultant to a Filipino game inspired by the country’s mythical creatures and her lastest short story collection Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories was nominated for the 41st National Book Awards. Her works have been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Hungarian.
Dr. Lily Ann B. Villaraza is the chair of the Philippine Studies Department at City College of San Francisco. A historian by trade but storyteller by heart, she also serves as a National Scholar for the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), guest editor of the forthcoming FANHS Journal 12, and chapter administrator of FANHS-SF. In her "spare" time Lily Ann loves doing "nerd-nugget-y" projects like archiving and documentation historical materials with different families, geeking out on Filipino & Filipino American literature, and looking for Filipino references in movies (Hi Barbie!) and other forms of pop culture.
Connect:
Co-sponsored by the Filipino American Center at the San Francisco Public Library and Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA).