Imagine an American doctor, a widower who in 1903 finds himself in a far away tropical place. Dr. Gerald McAllister is a doctor involved with a cholera epidemic in Ubec, Philippines. A widower, he thinks only of work and is a somewhat brittle overly serious man. When he meets the flirtatious Agustina, life changes for...
The story "Acapulco At Sunset" is set in Acapulco in 1790 when the Spanish galleons sailed from Spain to Mexico to the Philippines. The main character, a Filipina woman living in Acapulco, waits for the galleon from Manila and muses on her life there instead of in Manila. This is the title story of the collection, Ac...
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Fundamentals of Creative Writing is a marvelous textbook that combines useful technical advice on craft with beautiful practical examples in her own stories. Brainard's treatments of writerly voice and left brain/right brain theory as it connects to writing are among the best available in...
The novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard has been reviewed as follows: "Interweaves realistic events with myths of women fighters and goddesses, as well as fantastic dreams...Brainard's appealing characters are larger than life, people who change before our eyes, yet remain utterly convi...
Midwest Book Review says this of the novel, Magdalena: "Expertly written by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (USC Adjunct Professor and teacher at the UCLA-Extension's Writers Program), Magdalena is set in the chaotic backdrop of twentieth century East Asia. A romantic, powerful tale of three generations of Filipino women...
Personal Essays by Filipino American author, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, who was born and raised in Cebu, Philippines. Many of the personal essays in this book explore the author's Cebuano ties, including colorful accounts about her mother's political family, the Cuencos. The collection of 28 prose pieces also includ...