Podcast Episode 11: Babang Luksa

Nicasio Andres Reed read by Michael J. DeLuca

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Welcome back to the Reckoning Press podcast. It’s been ages, but we’re ramping up to a lot of cool new stuff in the coming year and beyond, including lots more podcasts, a fundraiser to increase payrates to 10c/word, $50/page for poetry and pay staff better too, t-shirts, pins, who knows what else. Homebrew recipes. Foraging instructions. Bespoke lectures about culling invasive species. We’re flush with ideas, as we should be, but we’re always looking for more. Drop us a line if you’ve got any?

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Thank you very much for listening.

Hi folks, it’s me again, your host, Michael J. DeLuca. I’m about to read you Nicasio Reed’s story from Reckoning 6, “Babang Luksa”. It is a beautiful, quiet, sad story about family and facing the real consequences of hard choices. I don’t think you will find your time with it ill-spent. It’s extremely evocative for me, as an Italian-American from a big family on the East Coast I don’t get to see very often. But I have great confidence in its broader applicability, because it’s impossible not to see the incredibly skillful hand with which Nico has sculpted these characters and sense that he’s looked them in the eye. And if you’re not having to make these kinds of choices already–well. Don’t let me jinx it. But it’s good to be prepared.

[Bio below.]

“Babang Luksa” by Nicasio Andres Reed

Author: Nicasio Andres Reed

Nicasio Andres Reed is a writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Lightspeed, and Fireside. He spent a long span of his itinerant childhood in Philadelphia, and now lives in Tagaytay, in the Philippines, with four dogs, some family, and the occasional uninvited monitor lizard. Find him on Twitter @nicasioreed or at nicasioreed.com. View all posts by Nicasio Andres Reed

Author: Michael J. DeLuca

Publisher Michael J. DeLuca’s short fiction has been appearing since 2005 in markets such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mythic Delirium and Apex. His novella Night Roll was a finalist for the Crawford Award in 2020, and his debut novel The Jaguar Mask came out from Stelliform Press in August, 2024. He lives in the rapidly suburbifying post-industrial woodlands north of Detroit with wife, kid, cats, plants and microbes. For more, try his website: The Mossy Skull. View all posts by Michael J. DeLuca