Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

Contact Information

Website:: http://swordskill.wordpress.com

Social Networks:: http://twitter.com/swordskill

Email:: cgskoo@gmail.com

Bio

Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo was born and bred in the Philippines, where she studied for a BA in English Literature. After spending a year in Beijing studying Mandarin, she went to Sydney for a Master’s degree in Creative Writing. In 2007, she won a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story “Benito Salazar’s Last Creation.” Currently an English lecturer at the College of International Education of Hong Kong Baptist University, she has been published online and in print in various international venues. Her play, “The Foundling”, was performed in Hong Kong by Burnt Mango Theatre Productions in 2009. She will have a short story in the anthology “The Dragon and the Stars” coming out in 2010 from DAW books.

Birthday:: April 9

Favorite Genres::
magic realism, science fiction

Fandoms:

BONES, Ghost in the Shell

Currently Reading

Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller

Body of Work

• “The Man on the Moon.” Dragon and the Stars. DAW Books. 2010.
• “The Startbox.” Usok Issue 1. October 2009.
• “Wildwater.” The Farthest Shore Anthology: Fantasy from the Philippines. Eds. Joseph Nacino and Dean Francis Alfar. Forthcoming publication.
• “The Rooftops of Manila.” Philippine Speculative Fiction 4. Eds. Dean Francis Alfar and Nikki Alfar. Manila: Kestrel Publishing. February 2009.
• The Foundling. Performed by Burnt Mango Theatre Productions. The Fringe Theatre, Central, Hong Kong. February 12 – 14, 2009.
• “Benito Salazar’s Last Creation.” Salu-Salo: An Anthology of Philippine-Australian Writings. Eds. Jose Wendell Capili, John Cheeseman, and Cuong Phu Le. Sydney: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Blacktown Arts Centre. May 2008.
• “Metropolis.” East of the Web. Ed. Charles Lambert. April 2008. <http://eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/>
• “The Twilight Express.” RUBRIC: Creative Writing Journal of the University of New South Wales. Issue 3 (2007). December 2007. <http://rubric.arts.unsw.edu.au/issue3/The_Twilight_Express-rubric_edited.pdf>
• “The Importance of Being Useless.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer [Manila]. 23 September 2007.
• “Corridor.” unsweetened Literary Journal (2007): 36. University of New South Wales.
• “8 PM.” The Philippine Community Herald [Sydney]. Volume 13, No. 5. May 2007.
• “A Comparison of Educational Styles.” The Philippine Community Herald [Sydney]. Volume 13, No. 4. April 2007.
• “The Scent of Spice.” The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories Issue 2. April 2007.

Samples of Work

• Metropolis (short story) – http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Metr720.shtml
• Benito Salazar’s Last Creation (short story) – http://www.geocities.com/phil_stories/koo_benito
• The Importance of Being Useless (article) – http://globalnation.inquirer.net/mindfeeds/mindfeeds/view_article.php?article_id=91061
• Corridor (poem) – http://unsweetenedtv.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/corridor/
• The Twilight Express (short story) – http://rubric.arts.unsw.edu.au/issue3/The_Twilight_Express-rubric_edited.pdf

Interviews / News

“Crystal Koo: Writer Rising” by Kenneth Yu, Tulay: Chinese-Filipino Digest, Vol. 21, No. 5, August 5 2008, pgs. 15-16