MONSTRESS is my short story collection (and first book), published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2012.  The book deals with the unexpected intersections between Philippine and American/Western culture, and most of the stories are based on real-world events and phenomena.  The full text of "Monstress," "Felix Starro," and "Save the I-Hotel" are here, followed by reviews for the book.  

Here is the description from the back cover:

Monstress introduces a bold new writer who explores the clash and meld of disparate cultures. In the National Magazine Award-nominated title story, a has-been movie director and his reluctant leading lady travel from Manila to Hollywood for one last chance at stardom, unaware of what they truly stand to lose. In "Felix Starro," a famous Filipino faith healer and his grandson conduct an illicit business in San Francisco, though each has his own plans for their earnings. And after the Beatles reject an invitation from Imelda Marcos for a Royal Command Performance, an aging bachelor attempts to defend her honor by recruiting his three nephews to attack the group at the Manila International Airport in "Help."

Lysley Tenorio reveals the lives of people on the outside looking in with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, in stories framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies—tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, the familiar and the strange. Breathtakingly original, Monstress marks the arrival of a singular new voice in American fiction.

THE SON OF GOOD FORTUNE is my first novel (and second book), published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2020.  The novel tells the story of Excel and Maxima, an undocumented young man and his mother, living in Colma, CA, just outside San Francisco, and the ways they fail and champion each other.  A more detailed synopsis (aka jacket flap copy) is below, and included here are the prologue and the first two chapters, followed by reviews for the book.

Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town’s seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight.

But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel’s tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. “We are ‘TNT’—tago ng tago,” she told him, “hiding and hiding.” Excel is undocumented—and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.

Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies—and existing outside the normal constructs of American society—Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?

Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their country—and to each other.

Published in 2013 by and edited by Jessica Hagedorn, MANILA NOIR (Akashic Books) is a collection of noir-themed short stories set in Manila, Philippines.  My short story, "Aviary," is included in the book.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm always thinking in terms of a book, of that potential one-on-one connection between the reader and the page.  So it's been exciting to know that other writers and artists have seen my work as something to transform for another medium entirely.  Over the years, I've had my short stories adapted into plays, staged readings, even an off-Broadway musical.  You can find out more about the stage adaptations for my stories "Monstress," "Save the I-Hotel," "The Brothers," and "Felix Starro" here.

I became a writer because of Bharati Mukherjee.  Most famous for her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning story collection THE MIDDLEMAN, Mukherjee (1940-2017) was an Indian-American writer who wrote brilliantly about the contemporary immigrant experience in America, telling stories not only about immigrants from India, but from all over the globe.  She was my professor at UC Berkeley, where I went to college, and out of curiosity, I read THE MIDDLEMAN, and one particular story, called "Fighting For the Rebound" featured a Filipina character named Blanquita.  Though I'd been a reader my whole life, it was my first time seeing a Filipino character in American fiction, a fact that both amazed and troubled me.  How amazing to see Blanquita on the page!  But also: why did it take so long for me to find a character like her in the books I'd read?  THE MIDDLEMAN changed my life and made me think that, maybe, I could write stories that somehow spoke to my experience too.  

Mukherjee became my mentor and was really the first supporter of my work.  So when I was asked to write the Afterword for THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF BHARATI MUKHERJEE, I was deeply honored.  It's one of the most important things I'd ever written, my way of saying "thank you."

My current project is a novel tentatively titled "The Children Go."  The novel focuses on Faustino Go, an elderly man from a rural village in the Philippines, whose seven grown children are spread across the globe, one on each continent.  Her children are all OFW’s—the term for Overseas Filipino Workers—and have left the Philippines, as well as their spouses and children—in order to find work abroad and send the bulk of their wages home.  His children work in various fields and industries: one daughter is a domestic worker in Australia while another is a nurse in Germany; one son plays guitar in hotel bands in Australia and does construction work in South Africa.  The novel follows the stories of Faustino’s children, while the overall narrative arc is powered by Faustino’s determination to reunite them one last time, back home in the Philippines, before their mother, Marivelle, completely succumbs to dementia.

The novel is inspired by the OFW phenomenon.  The Philippines government estimates at least 2.2 million Filipinos work abroad in over 100 different countries, and the money they send back home is critical to their economy, representing over 10% of the country’s GDP.  OFWs typically serve as domestic workers, caregivers, and in service industries, often leaving their families behind for years at a time, and while labor laws vary from country to country, it’s not uncommon for OFWs to be subjected to harsh, even inhumane working conditions.  Human trafficking remains a problem for OFWs, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, but has happened in the United States as well. 

Unquestionably, Filipinos working overseas face numerous hardships and challenges; at the same time, it’s essential to recognize the success that OFWs have found, and to explore the tension that, for many OFWs, their adopted country is now their home, and that returning to the Philippines is no longer an economically—or emotionally—viable option.  The novel examines the narrative possibilities of the OFW experience against the backdrop of different countries and cultures across the globe and, through the individual stories of Faustino’s children, explores several key questions: what does it mean to be Filipino when the culture at large defines who you are by the work you do?  Consequently, how does this tension of labor-as-identity impact Filipino self-perception?  And on a larger scale, when exploring Filipino migration in seven different continents, what does “Filipino-ness” mean in the global context?  These are essential but often overlooked questions in the conversation about Filipino migration; rather than answer them, “The Children Go” seeks to explore the possibilities of these questions.

Like many writers, I occasionally review books.  Included here are my New York Times reviews for the novels, MY GOOD SON (2021) by Yang Huang and A NEARBY COUNTRY CALLED LOVE (2023) by Salar Abdoh.