Nikki Alfar has fought fire 7,000 feet in midair and killed a snake with a flip-flop. Confoundingly, she’s found it much harder to earn a few Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, a couple of Bewildering Stories Mariner Awards, a Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award, and selection as one of twelve ‘Filipina writers of note’ by the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings. Nevertheless, she perseveres, somehow getting fiction published nationally and internationally, including her short story collection, Now, Then, and Elsewhen (UST Publishing). She’s a proud founding member of the LitCritters writing group, has been a fellow at the UP National Writers’ Workshop as well as a judge for the Palanca and Philippines Free Press literary awards, and more often than not co-edits the critically-acclaimed annual anthology series Philippine Speculative Fiction. She’s also edited The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2005–2010 (UP Press) and the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (Flipside Publishing). The rest of the time, she folds origami compulsively, smokes like a chimney, and tries to cook ever more imaginative suppers for her husband Dean and their daughters Sage and Rowan.