One of the joys of bookselling is being able to meet the authors that you support. We get to do this when we attend trade fairs abroad and then just recently when we attended the launch of Dean Francis Alfar’s Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 2.

The launch took place at a popular cafe last Sunday. Dean Alfar introduced the book by telling us what speculative fiction is and his experience of coming up with another edition of what proved to be a successful first venture last year. For this volume, the editor received more than one hundred short story submissions which he had to trim down to nineteen.

Most of the contributing authors were present and were introduced to us. It was a good mix of men and women, new and old writers. Some of the writers were only in their teens! Thank you to the authors who signed our copy of the book.
Here are some pictures from the launch:

Dean Alfar, author and editor.

Madeline Rae Ong, author, is a college student.

Russell Stanley Q. Geronimo, also a college student, reading an excerpt from his story.

Nikki Alfar, author.

Joseph F. Nacino, author.

Alexander Marcos Osias, author.

Vincent Michael Simblulan, author.

A picture of the authors present at the launch.