JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

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Jessica Zafra is a writer. Her first novel, The Age of Umbrage, is now available, as is The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra, which contains the stories from her two previous collections, Manananggal Terrorizes Manila and The Stories So Far, plus new and uncollected material. The Age of Umbrage and The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra are available at Shopee, Lazada, Fully Booked, and Mt Cloud.

Jessica hosts a talk show called The Sanity Maintenance Program on Studio B. Watch it here. One-time registration required.

She writes and presents a travel show, The Flip Trip, with Pepe Diokno on CNN Philippines. The first season was filmed in The Czech Republic. The show is currently on hiatus.

Her previous book, Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe, was published by Visprint.

Her other books include The Stories So Far (fiction) and Geeks Vs Jocks (essays on Federer, rugby, etc).

Jessica is best known for the Twisted books, which were collections of her popular newspaper columns. The Twisted books are not currently in print. On the occasion of the series’ 25th anniversary, the Twisted anthology will be published by De La Salle University Publishing House in 2021.

Jessica stopped writing for the newspapers in 2013 and stopped writing columns anywhere in 2016.

She gives writing workshops called Writing Boot Camp three or four times a year. (Note: No one has ever had a nervous breakdown from Writing Boot Camp, plus we all end up hanging out with each other afterwards.)

Jessica lives in Makati with the feline overlords, Drogon, Jacob, and Buffy. (RIP Koosi 1999-2014, Mat 2001-2015, Saffy 2000-2018)

In May 2014 her brain shut down due to water intoxication, but restarted shortly afterwards with no ill effects except for the occasional unintentional telekinesis.

She has hosted talk shows on TV (POV) and radio (Twisted in the Morning; Twisted on Sunday) and her mouth can run on automatic pilot. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, and the Hong Kong Standard. She’s written one movie (Elwood Perez’s Esoterika Manila), gotten executive producer credit on another (Lav Diaz’s Norte), and managed an extremely popular band for four months (at which she was entirely useless). Also, she’s produced books for the Management Association of the Philippines, SGV, the Women’s Business Council, and the William Shaw Foundation. She has won Palanca Awards for fiction and the National Book Award for essay, and was a fellow of the Yale-China Institute.

She has a lot of eyeglasses and earrings.

She does a podcast whenever she feels like it.

Jessica loves hopiang mongo, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Isak Dinesen, Venice, Eric Rohmer movies, old cemeteries, Roger Federer, Conan O’Brien, screwball comedies of the 1940s, leatherbound notebooks with plain pages, pancakes and coffee, Pilot pens, and Salawahan by Ishmael Bernal.

If you tell her anything personal about yourself she will remember it and probably put it in a story, so be warned.