"'We are on the eve of the new millennium.' This phrase has become so cliché in the last decade. So, is our understanding of time and space constrained to numbers and dates? The measurements we use to define and locate ourselves are really artificial constructs. Time is relative. Yet, the year 1999 is, for many, a clear historical marker. Not because it is the threshold to the 21st century, but because we are on the eve of a new movement to redefine ourselves as Filipinos and Filipino Americans..."

"this year’s theme, "visionaries," sought out pieces that would reflect on our personal and communal past, present, and future. "visionaries" was never a rigid criteria by which we choose from the submissions, but it did become a dynamic concept which gained its meaning through gathering the works themselves. by using end of the twentieth century as a focus, one fear was that we would receive a lot of pieces about the apocalypse. we didn’t. what we did receive were genres as diverse as erotic prose, revolutionary poetry, spoken word scripts, confessionals, academic research, autobiographies, geneaological histories, future fantasies, and many, many love poems..."