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Author I Storyteller

John Pucay

Karinderya Love Songs

A novel. Set in the 2020s, KLS follows an unnamed narrator who only desires committed people, a university student with a guilty secret, and an alcoholic runner nursing a broken engagement. Together, they spend drunken nights and mountain hangovers across Metro Manila and Baguio; searching for something real in a dating scene similar to a karinderya: bland, readily-available options that gorge but doesn’t sate.

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Game Boy Advance

A short film. Set in 2008 in a rural mountain town: Elias, aged 12, wants to rent a suit and attend the school dance. However, suit rentals are way above the means of a poor janitor’s son. So Elias scavenges and sells recyclable scraps to afford it. As Elias confronts the realities typical to his situation, he is forced to make a responsible, “mature” decision that costs him an irreplaceable part of his childhood.

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Artist Analysis

A newsletter. Originally created to share introspective and analytical takes on literature, the writing life, culture, and the arts. Artist Analysis is now focused on anything that significantly shapes our creative work and life. Published twice monthly.

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ABOUT ME

John Pucay

Welcome to my personal website where I share my work as an artist. Marketing-related engagements can be found on my LinkedIn.

Currently, I have a speculative-fantasy novel-in-progress and a short film in post-production-limbo. My short stories have appeared in Anomaly, the UP Diliman Likhaan Journal, and the Philippines Graphic Reader. My essays have appeared in Vice, Rappler, and The Inquirer. Karinderya Love Songs was a 2022 “Favorite Read” by Fully Booked’s Reading Allies. Game Boy Advance premiered at the 2024 San Diego Filipino Film Festival in California. El Sarlipan’s “Sidung” – the folk-country Kankana-ey song I produced for my short film’s original soundtrack – became a viral hit in the Cordilleras. And I received the 2025 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award in Reykjavik.

I write about literature, running, polyamory, and making a living as an artist. My short fiction leans toward magical realism.

John Pucay

Short stories & Essays

Bread Alone: What happens when we run out of working-class writers?

Anthology I 2026 I Indie Novella, UK

“Poor people don’t use spreadsheets or logical math in their lives. Pobre math works differently, usually involving a lot of diskarte, or hustle, and good luck. (Father bought our first washing machine with money he won from gambling in jueteng). On top of their stoic hard work, my parents, much like the Bon Jovi song they often played at home, were living on a prayer.” – Making Art on Pobre Math, an essay by John Pucay

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Kon Asa Ang Balay

Prose and poetry collection I 2025 I Silliman University National Writers Workshop Batch 62

Twelve writers once gathered in a haunted cottage in Dumaguete. Nearly a year later, this prose and poetry collection was born. My pieces here include an essay about losing several partners in an almost-four-year polyamorous relationship, a short story about a failed artist seeking answers in a mountain bonfire, and a poem written while looking out the sea at night.

Likhaan Journal

The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature I 2023, 2024 I University of the Philippines Press

Vol. 16: Missing Quarantine Pass
A pandemic short story about a down-on-his-luck father who receives a weird request from a powerful politician. This makes him cross paths with a psychic goose, a pig flying a red airplane, and a spelling bee.

Vol. 18: Ta-nong
The narrator relies on his memories as a carefree 12-year-old to perform a Kankana-ey indigenous cleansing ritual for his foreign-returned cousin, who requested the ritual for mysterious reasons.