Sunday, September 4, 2011

S2EP1: Apol Lejano-Massebieau's A FISHY TALE

Our first story for Season Two is “A FISHY TALE” by Apol Lejano-Massebieau, narrated by fiction and travel writer Yvette Tan. The story was published in the fiction anthology A TIME FOR DRAGONS, edited by Vincent Simbulan, and published by Anvil in 2009.


Running Time 35 min, 28 secs
Click on the PLAY button to stream the audio.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Madame Apol Lejano-Massebieau is a writer, wife, mother, product designer, and entrepreneur based in France. If you’d like to read more of her written work, she’s got a book of essays out, called PROVENCIANA, available at all Fully Booked branches. She also sells her handmade crafts on http://lapomme.etsy.com and http://lapommestories.etsy.com , and blogs about them on http://lapommeblogs.blogspot.com .



ABOUT THE READER. Yvette Tan is a writer based in Manila. Her stories have also won awards in the Palanca, Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards, and honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her first collection of short stories, Waking the Dead was published in 2009.






Monday, August 29, 2011

Pakinggan Pilipinas Season Two Starts on Sept 4


Link to TEASER 

Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Season 2, Episode 1.

Listen to the full story on Sept 4th, 2011, Sunday.


Sunday, July 3, 2011

Episode 13: Joseph Montecillo's NEW TOY

Happy 1st Birthday, Pakinggan Pilipinas!



As a gift, we're giving you “NEW TOY”, short fiction by young writer Joseph Montecillo. The story was published in Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 5 (2010 Kestrel). It’s narrated for us by copywriter and bookworm J.T. Tirona.

Link to FULL EPISODE
Running Time 14m 13s


ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Anthony Montecillo is currently a 15-year-old student at the Ateneo de Manila High School. He started writing stories in third grade after reading The Silence of the Lambs. His works have been published in Philippine Graphic magazine, Short, Fast, and Deadly, and Philippine Speculative Fiction Volumes 5 and 6. When he's not writing, he can be found aggressively defending pro-wrestling, after clearing away unfinished homework on his desk.



ABOUT THE READER J.T. Tirona is a copywriter, crazy cat person, bookworm, insomniac, and fan of absurdist humor, who spends countless hours absorbing interesting pieces of useless information that come in handy during Quiz Nights.





Monday, June 27, 2011

Coming July 2nd

Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Episode 13.
Listen to the full story on July 2, 2011, Manila Time.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Episode 12: Luis Katigbak's KARA'S PLACE

KARA’S PLACE by Luis Katigbak is our featured story this month, and it’s narrated by another writer, Christine "Tin" Lao. The story appears in Luis’s story collection, Happy Endings (UP Press), and can be also read here at The Best Philippine Short Stories website.


Tin and I try to have an intelligent discussion about “Kara’s Place”, so stick around until the end of the podcast. (The intelligence is there, I assure you, and it’s mostly coming from the loquacious Tin, if you’re willing to ignore my giggling.)


Enjoy!


Link to FULL EPISODE
Running Time 29m 41s
 



ABOUT THE AUTHOR Luis M. Katigbak co-founded BURN magazine and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the online music magazine Pulse.ph. Today, he is Editor-at-Large for UNO magazine, and a weekly columnist at the Manila Bulletin. His fiction has won Palanca and Philippine Graphic awards. If you’d like to read more of his works, you could try picking up Happy Endings, a collection of short stories from the UP Press, and The King of Nothing to Do, an anthology of his essays, from Milflores Publishing.





ABOUT THE READER Christine V. Lao received the Ateneo de Manila University’s Dean’s Award for Poetry and the Essay. She worked as a columnist, staff writer, and copy editor for an international broadsheet, then shifted to the fields of corporate law and development. Her latest fiction piece, “From the Book of Names My Mother Did Not Give Me”, appears in the recently released Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 6. (Photo by Urich Calumpang)



 











Monday, May 30, 2011

Coming June 5th


Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Episode 12.

Listen to the full story on June 5th, 2011, Manila Time.

Having problems streaming the audio? You could go and play it HERE.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Episode 11: Eliza Victoria's REUNION


For the merry month of May, Pakinggan Pilipinas presents the prize-winning short story “REUNION”, written by Eliza Victoria. It’s narrated for us by Solo Galura, an architect based in Quezon City. The story was published in 2009 in the Philippines Free Press, and won the Grand Prize for fiction in the magazine’s 2010 Literary Awards.


Eliza’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, locally and abroad. She has also received the Palanca award for her poetry. And if you’d like to read more of Eliza’s recent works, you could look for them in Stone Telling, Kritika Kultura, and Story Quarterly. She will also have a story in the upcoming sixth volume of the Philippine Speculative Fiction anthology series.

And by the way, do drop by at the year’s most awaited launch:


PHILIPPINE SPECULATIVE FICTION VOL. 6
Edited by Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias
Book Launch on 28th May, 2011, Saturday
U-View Theatre, Basement of Fully Booked
Bonifacio High Street


Link to FULL EPISODE
Running Time 36m 53s


ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eliza Victoria was born in 1986. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications based in the Philippines and abroad, most recently in Stone Telling, Kritika Kultura, Story Quarterly, the Philippines Free Press, and the upcoming Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 6. Her work has received prizes in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards. Visit her at http://sungazer.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter (@elizawriteshere).







ABOUT THE READER Solo Galura is an architect based in Quezon City. He dabbles in voice acting, propelled by his love of audiobooks.


Sunday, April 24, 2011

Coming May 1st




Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Episode 11.
Listen to the full story on May 1st, 2011, Manila Time.
 

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Not Really Episode 10: Yvette Tan's THE BRIDGE (Full Version)

You're probably thinking, "The first Sunday of the month came and went...Where on earth is the new episode?"


It's not really here... and unfortunately there won't be (technically) a new audio story out this month. I'm not really in the habit of making excuses, but a sickness and some personal affairs, did make the aspect of audio production difficult. The challenge of story permissions and voice casting (hence the call for narrators) didn't make the situation easier.


Hopefully in the next weeks, I'll get some things sorted out.


You know what does help? Moral support. If you help me spread the word about this site and what it aims to do, I'd be very happy. You don't know how much high site traffic cheers me up.

Which leads me to: there are people who volunteered to help in one way or the other, and I'm truly grateful for their contribution. So, big thanks to all our authors, narrators, Filcols (Hi, Bebang!), publishers, unofficial PR (Hi, Angelo Ancheta! Charles Tan! Tin Lao!), techie peeps (Hi, Jar! Osc!) ... and there's probably a lot more I've forgotten to include in this list (so I will make sure I thank them properly in a decent write-up). My heart goes out to all of you. Thank you.

By the way, so far I've received narrator audition samples, and I'm quite pleased! If you're interested, the call is still open. Send in a audition recording. All rightee.

Last year, we featured an abridged version of Yvette Tan's THE BRIDGE. In this pseudo-episode, I'm featuring the story again in its uncut glory, voiced wonderfully by author Nikki Alfar. (It did occur to me that I'm beginning to be too fond of Nikki, with this refeature coming after last month's "Adrift on the Street Formerly Known as Buendia". But she's a goddess, so, it's only normal.)

Link to THE BRIDGE
Running Time 34m 06s
Press PLAY to stream full episode.

E

Sunday, March 20, 2011

WANTED: Narrators

If you're intested in doing volunteer voice work (and uhm, by volunteer, I really mean *for free*, because Pakinggan Pilipinas is a project out of Pinoy-fiction love), drop me a line!


1. Record a four minute narration of any short story in mp3/wav form. (Don't worry too much if the background is noisy.)

2. Send to pakingganpilipinas@gmail.com. Do write: NARRATOR AUDITION in the subject.

3. If you're versatile and you want to send in more than one kind of narration, go for it.

4. Do let me know where you're from (and this has something to do with recording logistics).

I'm currently open to all kinds of voices, as the story calendar is still in progress, and a database of talent would make things easier.
(However, the most urgent need is a male teen for a story I've wanted to produce since last year.)


Thanks, and feel free to pass this note around!


Elyss
http://PakingganPilipinas.blogspot.com/

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Episode 9: Nikki Alfar's ADRIFT ON THE STREET FORMERLY KNOWN AS BUENDIA

If you’re one of the country’s commuting public, it’s likely that you’ve been stranded at least once in your life, and almost always the cause of your troubles is brought about by some form of flooding that cannot, or would not, be explained by public works officials.

Author Nikki Alfar offers a bizarre tale on being stranded, in this month’s featured story “ADRIFT ON THE STREET FORMERLY KNOWN AS BUENDIA”, narrated by marketer Karen Vigo. It first appeared in the Philippines Free Press (2007), and then again in Bewildering Stories. The Bewildering Stories editors loved it so much that it became one of the recipients of the site’s most signal honor, the 2010 Mariner Award.

Finally, fixed =) ENJOY!


Click here to stream FULL EPISODE.



 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NIKKI ALFAR is a fiction and comics writer, editor and resident grammar nazi of the Manila Lit Critters. Her fiction can be found in local publications like the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Genre Stories, and Story Philippines, and in online publications like Fantasy Magazine and Bewildering Stories. Nikki’s stories have received Palanca awards and citations in the Year’s Best Fantasy. She is wife to businessman/fictionist Dean Alfar, and is mother to daughters Sage and Rowan.

You can also listen to Nikki narrate a story by Yvette Tan: The Bridge.







ABOUT THE READER

KAREN VIGO is a full time campaign planner for a multinational cosmetics company. She loves food in all its glorious forms, and considers Coke Regular as the best beverage in the world.




Sunday, February 27, 2011

Coming March 6th




Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Episode 9.
 
All episodes come out every 1st Sunday of the month.
 
Listen to the full story on March 6th, 2011, Manila Time.
 

Music credits: "Investigations" performed by Kevin Macleod

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Episode 8: THE SNIFFLES by Carljoe Javier


For the cold month of February, we’re featuring THE SNIFFLES by Carljoe Javier, narrated by Joel Macaventa.  The Sniffles first appeared in the collection Tales of Fantasy and Enchantment, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, published by Milflores. It will be republished in the author's book of short stories, Geek Tragedies, to be published by UP Press in late 2011.

Link to FULL EPISODE
Running Time: 14m 10s
Additional Music Credit: "Happy Boy End Theme" performed by Kevin Macleod
Press PLAY to stream full episode.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARLJOE JAVIER studied Creative Writing in UP Diliman. He has two books, “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth”and “The Kobayashi Maru of Love”. His third book, “Geek Tragedies” is forthcoming later this year. He likes movies, books, TV, and comics, and probably spends too much time with his Xbox. He works as the business manager of the UST Publishing House.






ABOUT THE READER

JOEL "MCVIE" MACAVENTA loves to act. In times he can't, he works as a marketing exec in one of the country's TV channels, helping people sell the next major sports event. Joel blogs at "The McVie Show"  (http://mcvie5.blogspot.com/ ) now on its eleventh season, and also produces the fabulous podcasts of The Fabcasters.




Sunday, January 30, 2011

Coming February 6th




Click on the PLAY button to stream teaser for Episode 8.
 
Starting February, all our episodes will come out every 1st Sunday of the month.
 
Listen to the full story on February 6th, 2011, Manila Time.
 

Music credits: "Happy Boy End Theme" performed by Kevin Macleod

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Episode 7: KEEPING TIME by FH Batacan

For the year's first podcast, we're featuring "Keeping Time" by FH Batacan, with narration by fictionist Alex Osias. The story first appeared in the Philippines Free Press (2007), and then was reprinted in Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 3 (edited by Dean and Nikki Alfar; Kestrel), and the online e-book 2009 Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction edited by Charles Tan. In 2008, “Keeping Time” won first prize in Free Press Literary Awards, short story category. The story will be translated into German, and soon printed in the German science fiction magazine, Nova.

Link to FULL EPISODE
Running Time: 36m 17s
Additional Music Credit: "Unaswered Questions" performed by Kevin Macleod
Press play to stream full episode.



[EDIT: "Keeping Time" appears in the Philipine Speculative Fiction Sampler edited by Charles Tan and Mia Tijam, not in the 2009 Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction, also edited by Charles Tan. Apologies for the error... although if you've gone to the latter link, no harm in reading the stories there. They're pretty good. :-) Thanks to Eliza Victoria for pointing this out.  ]


2010 had been a great year. We've produced seven great stories, have featured nine voices, have reached out to a lot of new listeners to Filipino fiction podcasts.

Now, it's the first day of the year: 1.1.11. What could be more symbolic for beginnings than a row of ones?

Maybe this will be the year we'll feature stories in Filipino? Or celebrities doing narration? Or we get 500 million fans on facebook? Who knows? (Which reminds me, do LIKE our facebook page: Pakinggan Pilipinas. We'll be putting up the author's inspiration for the story.)

I am hopeful and positive. Anything is possible.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR: FH Batacan is a journalist based in Singapore. Her stories have appeared in various local and foreign magazines. Her first novel, “Smaller and Smaller Circles” (UP Press 2002), was received with much acclaim, and went on to win the Palanca Grand Prize Novel in English and the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award.










ABOUT THE READER: Computer whiz and fictionist Alexander M. Osias has an uncanny ability to detect even the slightest noise at recording, be it doors closing, drills drilling, or a rooster crowing from some kilometers away. He is married to writer/editor Kate Aton-Osias. They have, as of this writing, one son.