“As brilliant as [Emmanuel S. Torres] was, I don’t remember him to be a very effective teacher.”

Luis H. Francia sat down for a conversation with Martin Villanueva in the Emmanuel S. Torres Literary Arts Room in the George SK Ty Learning Innovation Wing of Areté last July 26, 2018. Among the topics discussed were Francia’s experiences studying in the Ateneo under Torres, writing as a New York-based Filipino in a time of Duterte and Trump, and the differences of writing in different genres. Francia also recorded a reading of eight poems written in light of today’s political climate.

“[Duterte and Trump] are the gifts that keep on giving.”

Francia is a multi-genre writer whose latest volume, RE: Reflections, Reviews, and Recollections (University of the Philippines Press, 2015), won a National Book Award from the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics’ Circle for Best Collection of Essays in English in 2016. He graduated cum laude from the Ateneo de Manila University with an AB in Humanities in 1964, and was most recently a visiting professor with the university’s Fine Arts and English departments.

Martin Villanueva is Chair of the Department of Fine Arts, is Associate Editor for the Literary Section of Kritika Kultura, and helps coordinate programming for Areté. His conversation with Francia is the second of a series to be recorded for Areté in collaboration with Kritika Kultura and the Department of Fine Arts’s BFA Creative Writing program.

In Conversation with Luis Francia

Boots Herrera, Director and Chief Curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery converses with Catalan artist Domènec, and MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art)curator Teresa Grandas on AAG's latest exhibition "Domènec. Not Here, Not Anywhere".

In Conversation with artist Domènec and curator Teresa Grandas

Fictionist Anna Cabe sat down with Carlo Flordeliza in the Emmanuel S. Torres Literary Arts Room in the George SK Ty Learning Innovation Wing of Areté last April 2, 2019. Cabe read from her novel-in-progress Balete Drive, and discussed getting to know about Martial Law through writing the novel, learning about the daily lives of activists, thinking about how histories are remembered, and writing for a Filipino diaspora audience.

Anna Cabe is a Pinay-American writer from Memphis, Tennessee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bitch Media, Terraform, The Toast, storySouth, Rappler, SmokeLong Quarterly, Joyland, and Fairy Tale Review, among others. She received her MFA in fiction from Indiana University and was formerly the nonfiction editor for Indiana Review. She is currently a Fulbright Fellow at Ateneo de Manila University, where she is completing a novel.

Jose Carlo C. Flordeliza received his AB in Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from De La Salle University-Manila. His work has most recently been anthologized in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction 2018. He is a part-time faculty member of Ateneo’s Creative Writing program.

This conversation is part of a series to be recorded for Areté in collaboration with Kritika Kultura and the Ateneo Department of Fine Arts’s Creative Writing program. These are recorded in the room named in honor of the poet, critic, and literature professor who was also the first and longtime curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery.

Areté Ateneo

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