JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

We’re told that Rizal and the ilustrados lived in Paris in the 1880s. What if one of the ilustrados was a woman? An independent woman who wore men’s suits, knew all the interesting characters of the day, and did whatever she wanted? She didn’t exist, so I made her up.

Who could draw a later George Sand, early Marlene Dietrich, proto-Madonna…why, Madonna’s ambassador to earth himself, Ricky Villabona. Spot the maps of France and the Philippines.

Presenting our latest zine: The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters, Volume 1, No. 1. First of a 4-part series. On sale August 31. P250. Email saffron.safin@gmail.com to pre-order, or message me @jessicazafrascats.

Reading Ali Smith is the most exhilarating experience. The things she can do with words—she bends them to her will, makes them fly with no visible effort. Her writing is exuberant, eccentric, and just when we thought everything has been done, original. Beginning in 2016, when Brexit signalled the end of the world as we know it (for me it was Prince’s death and then elections) she’s written a novel a year about our bizarre new world, where the truth is not the truth and everything you believe is wrong. The last volume Summer is hot off the presses, and in it the pandemic has begun. And yet the Seasonal Quartet is full of hope in humanity. Our species is not done yet.

Antkind, from the screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is not a novel to be consumed quickly. It is best read a chapter at a time in order to get to know its protagonist, film critic B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, and enjoy its comic invention without becoming violently irritated at his dithering and self-loathing. Occasionally it is advisable to hurl it across the room, and when one’s tantrum has passed, to retrieve it and put it back on the shelf to return to the next day. It is about Rosenberg’s discovery of a stop-motion movie whose total running time is 3 months (Yes, a 3-month-long movie, so Bela Tarr and Lav Diaz have ADHD in comparison), and when it is destroyed, his attempts to reconstruct it from memory. Antkind is like your neurotic friend whom you can only bear in small doses but can’t write off entirely because suddenly they’ll do something brilliant.

How to write a short story. How to build characters who breathe. How to create a setting, set a tone, figure out point-of-view. How to invent a plot and ratchet up conflict. How to find your style and discover your voice. Where to get ideas for stories. How to form the habit of writing.

Join Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp. Oct 10, 17, 24, 31. Four sessions from 3-5pm on Zoom. Fee: Php10,000. Early bird rate: P5,000 if you pay before Sept 10. Email us at saffron.safin@gmail.com to book your place.

You are living in a slum with your ailing parents. You work at a shop in a mall, and life is hard but you can support your family and you’re okay. You’ve just bought a smartphone and you can sneak a cigarette now and then. There is a terrorist attack on a train, and because you admire the people on Facebook who say what they want, you post a comment. “If the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government is also a terrorist?”

And so you descend into hell: arrest, interrogation, jail, the media circus, terrorism charges, people howling for your blood. Because you wanted likes. A journalist writes up your story of grinding poverty, hunger, squalor, and it’s used as evidence that you hated your country. Meanwhile the trans woman you were teaching to speak English, and your former PE teacher want to testify on your behalf, but find there are advantages to participating in your destruction.

Devastating, compelling (Dare you not to read it in a single day), bleakly funny. You know this happens. This is today’s world in 289 pages.

How many times have I thought, “I just want to lie in bed all day reading books”? I’ve been staying at home for five months, and I had not done so. Why? I have the time, I have the books, so yesterday I read all day and night, stopping only to feed cats and self.
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Too lazy to type.