Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand-pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

Now before we begin today, don't panic too much but this is the last episode of Lovar

Burton Reads for the season.

Yikes!

But the good news is we'll be back for another season before you know it.

So let's enjoy another fantasy tale.

Shall we?

This one comes from the Filipino author Dean Francis Alfar and it's called The Kite of

Stars.

Now Dean is a playwright, he's a novelist and a writer of speculative fiction, living

in Manila and the setting of this story is extremely unique.

We are familiar with many invented western worlds, places in sci-fi and fantasy tales that

have some elements of say medieval Europe and what Dean and a collection of other artists

and writers did and I think this is so incredibly cool is they created their own uniquely Filipino

fantasy setting in which to place their art and comics and write stories.

It's called Hinyirang and it's a reimagined version of the Philippines set during the

time when the country was a colony of Spain.

Hinyirang comes from the Tacolog phrase Lupang Hinyirang, land longed for, Dean and his

colleagues describe it as a place to learn about cultural heritage without it feeling like

research or academic work.

...