In Conversation With

Why the Boy Was Scooped Out of the Sewer

Peter Zaragoza Mayshle sat down with Cyan Abad-Jugo and Martin Villanueva in the Emmanuel S. Torres Literary Arts Room in the George SK Ty Learning Innovation Wing of Areté last August 8, 2018. Mayshle read from a novel-in-progress, Judas Republic, and discussed a story’s seed, a narrative’s structure, notions of time and timeliness in fiction, and the process of developing a work that creates a world and characters out of an actual news article about a body found in the Manila sewage system.

Mayshle received a PhD in English, Composition, and Rhetoric from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. His stories have appeared in The Manila Times, The Philippines Free Press, Mandala Journal, Every Day Fiction, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and Flash Fiction International. He currently teaches writing and rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University.

Abad-Jugo teaches with the Departments of English, Fine Arts, and Interdisciplinary Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University where she also advises BFA Creative Writing seniors. 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.

This conversation is the first of a series that will feature authors discussing their work, process, and practice. The series is produced by Areté in collaboration with Kritika Kultura and the Department of Fine Arts’s BFA Creative Writing program. The readings and conversations are recorded in the room named in honor of Emmanuel Torres, the poet, critic, and literature professor who was also the first and longtime curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery.

In Conversation With

In Conversation With features authors discussing their work, process, and practice. It is produced in collaboration with Kritika Kultura and the Department of Fine Arts’ BFA Creative Writing program, recorded in the Emmanuel Torres Literary Arts Room.