Studio News: Q2 2026 —An Author Discussion

Though I’ve seen it a hundred times so far, there is something energizing and inspiring about seeing the moon—new, full, crescent, gibbous etc.—on a night walk. This new moon has me feeling what my husband M. calls a “positive dissociation”, which also perfectly encapsulates how I feel about my recent conversation with Dilim Press’s Nikki Flores about the Philippine diaspora in food and literature. (I also talked briefly about books I’ve been reading, such as Thomas Parker’s Paranatures in Culinary Culture: An Alimentary Ecology, and currently reading, such as Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. But the Philippines and Filipino culture always takes center stage.)

I feel like a satellite to my own self and realizing things about myself that I haven’t really thought about before. I suppose it’s what my fellow Millenials mean when we say we are feeling our oats. Thoughts like where did I get those ideas? or how am I this cool with a fake tear drop tattoo and bindi because I was careless while tending to frying chips at work and got a spattering of very hot oil on my face? Which is to say that I feel good about this current appearance on social media, as I’m used to being the one who asks questions and highlighting someone else’s thoughts.

My short story, “Sagrada Bruja”, will appear in the press’s first anthology Galleon Dreaming. More to come about this. For now, I also think about what it means to be a satellite to one’s own culture, as I am now spending more time in the States than I am in the Philippines, and even more so in considering Filipino-Americans who were born and raised far from the homeland. What is worn down or lost, and, from that loss, what new things come forth?

Watch my author discussion with Nikki on Dilim Press’s YouTube.