Updates

There’s nothing like getting a story acceptance (or rejection for that matter) in your inbox first thing in the morning. A short story of mine  titled “Trichophagia” was accepted by The Other Room for publication!

Also, I just received news that the anthology The Dragon and the Stars (DAW), which had been nominated for Canada’s 2011 Prix Aurora Award and includes my short story “The Man on the Moon”, won in the category of Best Related Work – English! Congratulations to editors Derwin Mak and Eric Choi and the other writers!

Derwin Mak, Eric Choi, and Tony Pi accepting the award at the SFContario in Toronto, image courtesy of Eric

And to round up the day, a short fiction piece of mine got rejected by a literary journal but had made it to the second round. This piece has previously been a near-hit in another venue so it looks promising! I’ve generally been making it to a lot of second rounds lately, which is more than what I can say about last year, so it’s quite encouraging.

Finally, a HUGE thank you to the intrepid Charles Tan for getting Junot Diaz to sign a copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I had read two years ago (just found out it won the Pulitzer in 2008), to me. TO ME. There’s a part of my mind going Oh my lord, Junot Diaz WROTE MY NAME.

Junot Diaz was in Manila for the Manila International Literary Festival 2011. (He was in Hong Kong too for the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival last year, which I had missed for a reason I can’t remember now but I hope had been a good one.) Charles has the interviews with Mr. Diaz up in his blog so check them out!