Mission Statement

The Best Philippine Short Stories brings you the best in Philippine literature. In spite of its name, poems, essays, artwork, and cartoons will appear on a regular basis.

To help accomplish this goal, The Best Philippine Short Stories will do the following:

1. Actively seek out good material that have appeared in Philippine magazines. Too often such work goes into oblivion after publication unless it gets included in an anthology. And even if it gets included in an anthology, typical Philippine book publishing runs do not give such material wide enough exposure.

2. Accept material that cannot find a place in Philippine magazines because of the nature of its content. Although once controversial topics now appear in some magazines, there may still be some that may not be deemed suitable for local consumption. The Best Philippine Short Stories does not insist on political correctness and is not a site dedicated to showing only the pretty aspects of Philippine life. We will accept work that shows the good, the bad, and the ugly about the Philippines and its people. All we insist on is literary excellence.

3. Provide a place for longer, more fully developed stories to reach an audience. Philippine magazines may not have all the space that longer stories need; we don't have an arbitrary limit on how long a story should be. We believe a story must not be longer than necessary but should be long enough to deliver its full message.

4. Encourage non-Filipino writers to submit work that includes Filipinos among its characters. This will provide us with insight as to how other cultures perceive us. Again, the author's treatment of Filipinos in the story is not as important as its literary merit.

5. Encourage new writers to submit Philippine stories. We will consider good stories by writers whose techniques aren't polished enough. We still consider the story to be more important than the way it is told.

We are proud to say that some original BPSS material have been picked by print publications to use, providing their authors with additional exposure.

6. Nurture a new era of Philippine world literature--we will look for stories that tell how Filipinos adjust, succeed, fail, laugh, and cry in their new environments as they continue to spread out all over the world. In this new millennium, real Philippine literature cannot limit itself to the obsolete concept that only stories set in the Philippines or those written by its citizens belong.

7. Host the ezine on a reliable commercial web server (web space to be initially donated by a friend of Philippine literature).This means it's commercial-free and you'll never get those annoying popup and popunder windows that continually bug readers of web sites hosted on free web servers.

The site will be designed to emphasize easy readability of the featured stories. Illustrations will accompany the stories and poems whenever possible.

 

This ezine is sponsored by the RP Literature Group
Web Design by Geejay Arriola

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