Explorers of Fiction

The Editors of MAXIMUM VOLUME

Angelo R. Lacuesta has won several Philippines Graphic Awards and Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for his fiction, as well as the NVM Gonzalez Award. His first collection of stories, Life Before X and other stories (University of the Philippines Press), won the 2000 National Book Award and the inaugural Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award. His second collection, White Elephants: stories (Anvil), won the 2004 National Book Award. His third collection, Flames and other stories (Anvil), was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. 

He has received several local and international grants and fellowships, among them the International Writing Program at Iowa University, Iowa, USA. His work as an anthologist includes Latitude: Writing from the Philippines and Scotland, co-edited with Toni Davidson, and Fourteen Love Stories, co-edited with Jose Y. Dalisay.

He was literary editor of the Philippines Free Press from 2006-2010 and is currently editor-at-large at Esquire Philippines. He is married to award-winning poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. (Photo by Jake Versoza)

Dean Francis Alfar is a novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His fiction has been published and anthologized both in his native Philippines and abroad (Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Apex Book of World SF, and the Exotic Gothic series among others). 

His books include the novel Salamanca, short fiction collections The Kite of Stars and Other Stories and How to Traverse Terra Incognita, and the children’s book How Rosang Taba Won A Race.  His work as an anthologist includes volumes of the Philippine Speculative Fiction annuals, as well as the forthcoming Horror: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults and The Farthest Shore: Fantasy from the Philippines.

His literary awards include ten Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature—including the Grand Prize for Novel for Salamanca—as well as the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Awards for the graphic novels Siglo: Freedom and Siglo: Passion, the Philippines Free Press Literary Award, and the Gintong Aklat Award.  He was a fellow at the 1992 Dumaguete National Writers Workshop as well as the 20th and 48th UP National Writers Workshop.

Dean lives in Manila with his wife, award-winning fictionist Nikki Alfar and their daughters Sage and Rowan. He is currently working on his third collection of short fiction.

DEAN and SARGE were interviewed by Ruel S. De Vera for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine about MAXIMUM VOLUME and their hopes about the future of the short story and the "growth of a writing nation." Read the full article here.