We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child.

Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

Adaptability is the simple secret of survival.

It's not just NYU. There are days when I feel like I'm stranded in some upscale mall in Pasadena. Don't even get me started on the insidious transformation of Bleecker Street!

I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City.

Growing up in the Philippines, I loved all kinds of movies. We had a very healthy film industry there when I was a child. It's now gotten very limited. They only make action movies and hard-core exploitation movies. Women get raped; men get shot.

Writers and scholars have emerged in recent times (some familiar, some new) to continue to challenge the notion of a literature that encompasses the world - and reaffirms our existence in it. It is a multicultural vision that embraces and includes our shrinking universe; it is a multicultural vision that the white man fears and a vision that the rest of us can celebrate.