Animated classroom discussions, glass jars breaking in a laboratory, a daughter’s visit to the hospital, painting in a bathroom, and a ring more valuable than its cost—these are the images that Sanchez has made memorable through her sheer ability to describe clearly and effortlessly the complexities of the human heart.

—Ronald Baytan, Author of The Queen Lives Alone: Personal Essays (UP Press, 2012)

This book should carry a warning: You will feel things. You will ugly cry at work. Anna’s stories are not about the grand gestures, but about the preciousness of the everyday. Her characters (or we) always wonder, “How much time do we have?” or “What happens to everything we love?” Pics or It Didn’t Happen and Actual Stories  wants you to hug your beloveds, because salvation is the one contagion we must help spread.

—Mary Jessel Duque,  Winner of the 2018 Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize

There’s so much pain and longing in these stories, you just want to give these kids a big hug. They feel, and fail, and fall, over and over, and Anna manages to find the words for the shape of their sorrow. This is compassion, yes, but also craft, control. It’s also faith—that the right words in the right order can save us, make the world a livable place again, and our lives something we can almost endure.

—Maria Celeste F. Coscolluela, Teacher and Palanca winner for fiction