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Home > Journals > PAHA > Vol. 13 (2023) > Number 2

 

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

Jessica Zafra

Abstract

Excerpt: Thank you very much to the committee on the Fr. Henry Lee Irwin, SJ, Chair for naming me this year’s [2019–20] chair holder. Chair holder? I feel like furniture. It’s an honor to be acknowledged by the academe because I don’t actually have a BA, and also I am what you call a popular writer. I don’t mean that everybody reads me, but that real people read me as opposed to the people who will write papers about me, so this, this is a great honor. Actually, as we go along, I will show you that not only is it attractive to me for the prestige, but also because it’s a job. When I look at the roster of previous holders of this chair, there are literary writers, there are National Artists, and so on. I find that I am probably the first chair holder who is part of that endangered species, the working writer, as in I live off my writing. And I feel that right at the start of this lecture, I have to give the most important piece of advice to people who want to be writers: your parents were right. You should become doctors, lawyers, etcetera, and then write on the side because it’s really tough, and I’m talking to you from the position of someone who’s already semi-famous.

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