Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

Last March 19, 2015, the University of the Philippines Press 00 in honor of their 50th anniversary and in honor of the late Dr. Damiana L. Eugenio — had a roundtable on “Myth and Writing.” I attended the event, and for the sake of those who were unable to do so — there was a lot of interest, but it was a weekday — I’ve uploaded my recordings from the event. Not all the recordings are of great quality, but hey, better than nothing right?

To give you an idea of what to expect, it wasn’t a roundtable in the sense of a facilitated discussion with a series of questions being posed to the panel. From what I gather, the panelists seem to have been asked to read/present an excerpt from their work, then talk generally about their writing in relation to myth, followed by a general Q + A. Not all panelists adhered to that structure, mind you, which was good — I personally found Nikki Alfar’s portion to be the meatiest, even if it was the shortest. Panelsists spoke in a mixture of English and Filipino, although except for one it was mostly English. Also, Budjette Tan was unfortunately not in attendance.

• * Opening Remarks – Dr. J Neil Garcia
• * Tribute to Professor Eugenio – Prof. Melecio Fabros III
• * Rody Vera – Note that an excerpt from his play was performed, so the audio gets Very Loud — lots of shouting so adjust audio accordingly.
• * Joey Nacino
• * Emil Flores
• * Karl de Mesa
• * Nikki Alfar
• * Dean Alfar
• * Question and Answer Part 1
• * Question and Answer Part 2