TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Frankfurt, Germany: Dinner with Dr. Michaela Keck

Monday, October 20, 2014

Frankfurt, Germany: Dinner with Dr. Michaela Keck

In Frankfurt, Germany, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Michaela Keck, from the Institute of English and American Studies at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.

Michaela and I had never met before, but we had such an easy time together and ended up talking for hours, until the cafe closed in fact.

Since she had reviewed one of my book projects, Angelica's Daughters, a collaborative novel I co-authored, she talked of she had been teaching in Taiwan when Pilipinas Journal contacted her to review the novel.

The other authors of Angelica's Daughters and I, were/are grateful to Michaela for her keen and generous review of the novel. The co-authors of the novel (Cecilia Brainard, Erma Cuizon, Susan Evangelista, Veronica Montes, and Nadine Sarreal) were happy that Michaela appreciated and understood the challenges and nuances of our undertaking. While we had fun writing the book, it was not easy, since we had to "merge" our minds together, so to speak, and open ourselves to what the Muse would give us. We never could control the novel and in fact, Michaela missed that certain "freedom" when we rewrote it into a "cohesive whole" to please our publisher. Michaela understood, perfectly, the beauty of the roughness of such a collaborative undertaking.

Please click here to read her review of Angelica's Daughters. Here's another link for the review. The novel is light and fun, as it was intended to be. It has received other very good reviews aside from Michaela's.

Hi, Michaela, it was a wonderful and stimulating evening with you!

~~
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Tags: Berlin, Frankfurt, Germany, Angelica's Daughters, novel, dugtungan, Michaela Keck, Cecilia Brainard

This is all for now,
Cecilia

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.