Podcast with Marga Ortigas, author of “God’s Ashes: Apocrypha”

CChanging the Limit. The Refugee Crisis. The Rise of Social Media. These big societal questions—and others—inspired journalist Marga Ortigas to write her new novel God’s ashesa speculative fiction story set in a very different year than 2023. A transnational crime unites the book’s characters, rich and poor, on a journey across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. They all come together in a book that explores human connections, the plight of the stateless, and environmental degradation.

In this interview, Marga and I talk about the inspiration for her book, its main themes and whether her work as a journalist helped her create her world and bring together the threads of her novel.

Marga Ortigas has traveled the world as a journalist for three decades, with a career spanning five continents and two of the world’s largest news networks. After starting out in the Philippines, she joined CNN in London, where she worked across Europe and covered the Iraq War from its inception. In 2006, she returned to Manila and the Asia Pacific region, where she reported from the frontlines of armed conflict and climate change as a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera.

She is the editor of I, migrantan online platform presenting texts by people from the diaspora, advocating for a universal humanity despite all differences between people.

Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio presenter based in Hong Kong.

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