LITERATURE
CONTEMPORARY WRITERS IN THE PHILIPPINES
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue
Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New
American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon
West Review, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute Books, 2000), Eros
Pinoy (Anvil, 2001), InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent (Study Center Press, 2003), Going Home
to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Coloring Book (Rattlecat, 2003), Not Home But Here (Anvil,
2003), Pinoy Poetics (Meritage, 2004), Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area (Avalon
Publishing, 2004), 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905(University of the
Philippines Press, 2004), Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005),
and Graphic Poetry (Victionary, 2005).
Galleon Prayer
pilipinas to petatlán
she whispers desert trees, thorn-ridged, trickling yellow candles; roots spilling snakes’ blood
virgin of ribboned silk; virgin of gold filigree
one day’s walk westward, a crucifix of fisherman’s dinghy dimensions washes ashore
virgin adorned in robe of shark embryo and coconut husk
she fingers mollusks, wraps herself in sea vines
virgin of ocean voyage peril
she wills herself born
virgin of mud brick ruins; virgin of sandstorm echoes
she is saint of commonplaces; saint of badlands
virgin of jade, camphor, porcelain; virgin of barter for ghosts
penitents, earthdivers of forgotten names praying skyward
virgin of scars blossomed from open veins of fire
she slips across the pacific’s rivers of pearldiving children
virgin of copper coins
she is bloodletting words, painting unlikeness
virgin of anachronism
children stained with berries and rust, their skeletons bend, arrow-tipped; smoke blurs eyes’
edges
virgin of mineral depletion; virgin of mercury
at other altitudes she remembers to breathe; a monument scraping cloud
virgin of tin deposits extracted from mountains
these are not divinations; there is goldleaf about her skin
virgin of naming and renaming places in between.
While on a Fulbright grant, she studied and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
where she received her MFA in Writing. She is currently taking her PhD in SUNY Albany.
Her works include Disappear, a chapbook published in 2005 by High Chair, Dark Hours,
published in 2005 by The University of the Philippines Press, elsewhere held and lingered,
published in 2008 by High Chair, A catalogue of clothes for sale from the closet of Christine
Abella: perpetual student, ukay fan, and compulsive traveler, published in 2012 by the Youth &
Beauty Brigade, and There is no emergency, published in 2015 by the Youth & Beauty Brigade.
She is also the youngest poet in the anthology A Habit of Shores, the third part in Gémino H.
Abad's three-volume collection of one hundred years of Philippine poetry and verse.
Some of her works have also appeared in Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, Philippine
Studies and the online journal High Chair. In September 2006, Dark Hours was reviewed by
Andy Brown, the creative writing program director at the University of Exeter.
Cruz has won two Palanca Awards to date, one in 1996 for "Second Skin" and another in 2001
for "The Shortest Distance". Her book Dark Hours won the 2006 National Book Awardfor
Poetry.
Signals
I took the amaretto to mean there was no beer in the house.
I took the clairvoyant weather to mean I could dismiss your unappealing conclusions.
I took the elevated appeal of allusions to mean the fever had no fangs.
I took the gelatinous substance to mean a diminished generosity toward herbivorous endeavors.
I took the initials to mean just leave the front door unlocked.
I took the jellyfish scuttling by the reef to mean the kleptomania was the least of my concerns.
I took the lesion barely hidden by your sleeve to mean you had no wish to mimic the tragedies of
your flawed heroines.
I took the marionette on the clothesline to mean there was hope for the unsuspecting neighbor.
I took the oppressive serendipity to mean that panic might or might not send us straight into an
emergency.
I took the paprika to mean quiz the cook, not the gardener.
I took the sly reference to mean the substitute had surpassed the preference.
I took the song to mean you took the necessary pill.
I took the tricky decimal to mean I should unsay the speech I made over dinner.
I took the unexpected unification to mean veer away from condescending middlemen.
I took the third x-ray to mean you had nothing more to lose.
I took the yapping from the room below to mean the token zorroing was a far more appropriate
gesture.
I took the zero dangling from the headline to mean the aphorism was a spell in disguise.
Vanitas
as a stain in a landscape is
I. Her labyrinth
Toy
1.
From thick vines hung from trees
let go by hands,
from rocks by the banks
crammed with coiled springs for wet feet—
it is all wings and arcs
cleaving wild air
into the cool waters of Mintal river.
Loose planks bridge here
to nowhere shakily.
Towers of unseen worlds rise,
built tale upon tall tale.
From treetops where footraces ended,
the earth is more than grass
and clods of dirt—instead, a wide bilao
of hills and mountains, rivers
and houses and trees trees trees!
The sky is more than a roof
if you pry the branches apart.
God lives also in the trees,
and the leaves breathe with him.
No other school teaches that.
2.
Of all the fruits and flowers
and fish and fowl
that take life from the land
and the waters and the air
from Mintal to Calinan
and beyond to Marilog,
and even to Silay and Iloilo,
none turns the day around quicker
to its point of lightness and heat
than the sweetness without
husk or shoreline that is
human love.
Love the leap in the air
without shadows
over walls and trees and craters
torn open by bombs.
Love the stroke of midnight and fire
announcing orchids
ahead of bicycles and breasts. Love
keeps the hands of dreams warm
in all directions. Love
the stillness that won’t stay still.
Or slip away
like a ship in the night. Love
be still.
3.
Caught in their own melodies of growth
and yearnings,
they move apart and out
to come into their own—
the living forms in the dance and the garden,
and the children, marking time
on a tightwire, eventually unheavened
under all kinds of weather
and sleep. Meanwhile,
they are flung open to receive
lessons pried out of the rock
of astonishments
and the words that pile up
without end
on the way to school and
later, work.
4.
The hues and slowburn of sweetness
flush in one durian fruit;
the sure sail and dip of
eagle wingtip, deadly swoop,
and rip and tug of beak;
surge of fish and leap of cat;
pull and push of root and treetop;
burst of sap spiraling
inside trees and leaves and shells;
ebb and tiderush, rot of bones
and stars—
so too
in the flex and swing,
bend, stretch, twist
to near cracking, slack and
spring and intimations of
the body pinned by pain
and drip of death,
or wet with anguished joy,
lurk of hope, laughter shared
and emptiness.
Surface
tensions bruised by beauty
brief.
Rippling.
Tingle
in the soul between
measure and
release.
5.
Harder on the heart is
the going away than being gone.
Being gone has walked through walls
and changed the wine to water—and now
the wall can break itself down
to dust and spilled water
dry up without smoke.
Going away shrinks all windows and doors
to the size of the unspoken.
A life gathers into a face before us,
and starts to close its eyes.
In the dimming light
we stand as on a jolt
of tide-sucked sand,
our balance shifted,
our own face flush with the breath
slipped out of the one becalmed.
Then, the one thing left to do,
the only tender thing to do,
beyond the anger and consent,
moving to its own secret music and
not made smaller by pain,
is to climb up God’s tree
and nibble on her breath,
or get the broom and sweep
without thought
or excitation
the shadow rolled out
on the hospital floor
tile by square
white tile.
6.
God lives in trees and speaks
the languages of winds,
shadows, light, laughter.
Always the birds bring in new seeds
and the waves new water—as if
they have not done that before, as if
they had not always done that
as before, as if they were not here
in the beginning after all.
New buds flower, dry up, and drop
from their stems. Suddenly,
a big shadow is upon us, and in a snap
the truck moves on and light springs back
on old familiars.
Frisky little bodies plunge into the water
and the waters receive them.
The work of memories and affections
is the work of water, earth, and fire.
Were we where we were,
or will we be where we’ll be?
A hand takes us, and we take the hand.
We feel the earth push back our feet,
and we move on
to feed the birds, or watch
the goldfish breathe out ripples
on the surface of the dug-out pond.
A Kink of Burning
1.
Breath of wings. Sighing of lovers
lost to the winds. Sigh of the wind then.
Breath unspoken. About to speak.
No mouth to word dead loves,
only—listen!
A premonition taking wing
bigger than trees.
Through spires of skylight
—through treetops
—through bird tongues swimming on wakened leaves.
The dead cling to music and the rains come.
Breath on ears tingling. Supernal. Breath of dead loves.
2.
Water jets down bald mountains
and wraps the fevered earth with thick muddy blankets.
3.
Among the morning branches a kingfisher—
Is it? Was it? On a leaf a butterfly
Stunned by the wildest flowers
Of faith and desire. Therefore:
Feeling
is all that remains
at the back of the head when no one is looking.
Weightless with lost names
And the fish-breath of solitudes.
4.
Forgetting, then, the last ablution.
Prayers drift past the blooming lotuses
Like ashes from some unsmothered fire
Groping for various shapes of desire.
A wild river flows up past trees still standing,
past words that have given up on words.
5.
A pair of long-parted lovers
recovered to each other’s attentions,
breathe a nakedness and a body
to the moon in their minds.
They find the fullness of longing
shot through with holes,
and its emptiness filling up the scooping hands.
Shorn of old obligations and allegiance
that invaded romance not just once,
they lick each other’s thighs, nipples and breasts
without the faithful words I love I love I love.
Themselves unmoving like roots
In each other’s arms, yet
Moving past names and renamings
Of old resentments and judgments,
they cleave to each other without memory or hope,
creating without god a sweetness
inextinguishable and tender
the way a feather of fire holds on to fire
and takes wing, blazing with singing.
JOEY DALISAY JR.
Dalisay has authored more than 20 books since 1984. Six of those books have
garnered National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle. In 1998, Dalisay made it to
the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most
accomplished Filipino artists of the past century. He also won 16 Palanca Awards in five genres.
For winning at least five First Prize awards, he was elevated to the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000.
He has also garnered five Cultural Center of the Philippines awards for playwriting;
and FAMAS, URIAN, Star and Catholic Mass Media awards and citations for his screenplays.
He also chaired the 1992 ASEAN Writers Conference/Workshop, in Penang, Malaysia. He was
named one of The Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of 1993 for his creative writing. In
2005, he received the PremioCervara di Roma in Italy for extensively promoting
Philippine literature overseas. In 2007, his second novel, Soledad's Sister, was shortlisted for the
inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong.
After serving for three years as English and Comparative Literature Department Chair,
Dalisay assumed the post of Vice President for Public Affairs of the U.P. System from May 2003
to February 2005. He is currently a Professor of English and creative writing at the College of
Arts and Letters, U.P. Diliman, where he also coordinated the creative writing program. He is
also Director of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing. Aside from his column for the Philippine
Star, he also writes political and social commentary for the newsmagazine Newsbreak and
the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine.
The story starts with the protagonist, Noel Bulaong, reminiscing about his childhood days
in his native land inKangleong, somewhere in the Visayas region. He is on a flight going home
from the US to bury his father. Hereminisces about how he and his friends would pick up
coconuts that fell from the tree and take these to a neighbor who would turn these into
coconut candies: bucayo.Fast-forward to college life in Manila where Noel decided to study. By
his 2nd year in school, Noel was alreadyamong the students staging protests against the Marcos
government and his martial law. This was introduced in thebook via a protest being dispersed by
the military,
In my second year of college, I ran across that field in a blind panic, hurried along by
gunfire. The university wasunder siege by the military; we had set up barricades of
commandeered tables, benches and chairs near the spot from where I had admired the study
horses. We camped behind this makeshift wall, students and professors alike,listening to
speeches and singing revolutionary songs. Our bones were cold, but our breath
was warm. Peopletalked of France and China and Vietnam. On the other side of the barricades
stood Marcos¶ assembled legions:truncheon-wielding riot police in khakis and cobalt-blue
helmets, the army in fatigues, riding armored jeeps. All through the morning emissaries had
crossed over from one side to the other.
Having survived this attack, Noel and his comrades settled in an apartment where they
talked about the movementwhile in hiding. Noel by this time has decided to quit school. Talk of
childhood days in their respective homes, familyanecdotes and planning for counter-attacks took
up most of Noel¶s days, hidden in this apartment.Fast-forward again to the future where Noel
now serves as assistant to the Deputy Minister and writes his speeches,among other things. He
has decided to leave the movement after being released from prison. He has lost contactwith his
other comrades.Laurie, a former comrade in their apartment-hidden days ran into Noel one day
and she has likewise decided to leavethe movement. Perhaps both feeling misplaced, and
disoriented, wanting to connect with each other in a way thatwould touch the persons that they
used to be, Noel and Laurie made love.But nothing came of this. They both decided it was too
much too handle« too overwhelming an emotion that theywouldn¶t be able to cope. They once
again lost touch and last Noel heard, Laurie had gone back to the movementand is hiding in the
mountains.
Soledad’s sister
The novel starts in a cloudy August night when a casket bearing the corpse of one who is
identified as Aurora V. Cabahug arrives in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport from Jeddah.
Mysteriously identified by Jeddah authorities as having died from drowning, she is one of 700
Filipino overseas workers who return as corpses to NAIA every year.[3] The corpse, however, is
not the real Aurora Cabahug but of her older sister, Soledad. The real Aurora Cabahug, called
Rory, has in fact never set foot beyond the small town of Paez and is a singer in the Flame Tree,
a KTV nightclub frequented by cops, the town’s vice-mayor and Koreans. Rory learns of her
sister's death and she claims the body with the help of a local police officer, Walter G. Zamora.
Along the way, their vehicle along with the casket is stolen by notorious carnapper known as
Boy Alambre. In the end, Soledad's casket, is discovered by Boy Alambre. He pushes the casket
into a murky river, but in an ironic twist of fate, the thief is taken along and drowns with the
corpse. Soledad remains as faceless as she was when she came home.
In a series of flashbacks and narrations, we learn of the stories in each of the main characters’
lives. Their mysteries are not fully unraveled however, left to the past or to events that have yet
to be told.
KATRINA TUVERA
She earned her BA in Humanities (Art History) and MA in Creative Writing from University
of the Philippines-Diliman. She resides in Manila and currently divides her time between
teaching literature and creative writing at De La Salle University-Taft and completing the sequel
to her first novel, The Jupiter Effect.
Her first novel, The Jupiter Effect, was published by Anvil Manila in 2006, and awarded the
Manila Critics Circle National Book Award that year. She received her first National Book
Award four years earlier with the publication of Testament and Other Stories, which included her
Palanca-winning story. Tuvera has received writing fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation,
Vermont Studio Center, Ledig House, Blue Mountain Center, Hedgebrook Retreat, and the
MacDowell Colony in the United States, and Hawthornden International Retreat in Scotland. A
former staff officer of the Philippine Senate’s electoral tribunal, she is a lecturer at the
Department of Literature, De La Salle University.
Books:
Ilustrado
Exuberant and wise, wildly funny and deeply moving, Ilustrado explores the hidden truths
that haunt every family. It is a daring and inventive debut by a new writer of astonishing
talent.
It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled
from the Hudson River—taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature.
Gone, too, is the only manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity
by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his student and only remaining
friend, sets out for Manila to investigate.
To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador’s story through his
poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich and dramatic family saga
of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the
Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs
to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a
society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.
Exuberant and wise, wildly funny and deeply moving, Ilustrado explores the hidden truths that
haunt every family. It is a daring and inventive debut by a new writer of astonishing talent.
by Miguel Syjuco
In hills,
In bomb blast
And xyz,
BOOKS:
Ilustrado
I Was The President’s Mistress
Louie Mar Gangcuangco was born on March 26, 1987 in Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
He finished his primary education in Montessori de San Juan (MSJ) as the batch valedictorian in
1999. He represented MSJ in several competitions, most notably the Walt Disney Interschool
Leadership Competition where he won second runner-up.He graduated from Manila Science
High School (Masci) in 2003 as the First Honorable Mention, First Meritorious Awardee, Best in
English, and Best in Filipino. He has represented Masci in several interschool competitions,
notably: National Inventor’s Contest; Children’s Museum and Library Incorporated Impromptu
Speech Contest (second place); and The Philippine National Police Impromptu Speaking Contest
(third place). He was the Science editor of The Nucleus, the school paper of Manila Science,
which was awarded as the third best school paper in the Philippines during his editorship.He is
two years accelerated in college under the Integrated Liberal Arts & Medicine (Intarmed)
curriculum of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. As a freshman, Louie Mar,
together with his teammates Lyle Gomez and AtrioLopez, won first place in the UP Manila
Intercollegiate Debate Tournament, toppling down seniors from different colleges in the
university.
Even as a medical student, Louie finds time to go out and socialize. His night-out’s has
inspired him to write his novel, Orosa-Nakpil, Malate, which he self-published in March 2006 at
age eighteen. His work was featured in the top-rating TV show, Sharon, in June of the same year.
In August 2006, Louie Mar was awarded the Y Idol Award (Youth Idol Award) by Studio 23’s Y
Speak. Later that month, the SentrongWikang Filipino conferred a SertipikongPagpapahalaga for
Orosa-Nakpil, Malate. His phenomenal novel is endorsed by prominent people and institutions
including the multi-awarded director, Jose Javier “Joey” Reyes, Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan (former
DOH secretary) and Dr. Raul Destura of the National Institutes of Health Philippines.
After one year of circulation, Orosa-Nakpil, Malate made it to the Best Sellers List
released by National Book Store in April 2007. With him in the list are authors Mitch Albom of
One More Day, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro of The Fifth Horseman, and Gabriel Garcia
Marquez of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The book landed on the Top 8 spot,
overtaking international authors Steve Berry and Kiran Desai.
In 2008, Louie Mar Gangcuangco published his second book, Gee, My Grades Are
Terrific: A Student’s Guide to Academic Excellence, a self-help book for students.
Louie Mar passed the Straight Internal Medicine Internship in the Philippine General
Hospital. He will be graduating from the UP College of Medicine in 2010.
BOOKS:
Orosa-Nakpil, Malate
Gee, My Grades Are Terrific: A Student’s Guide to Academic Excellence
LUALHATI BAUTISTA
She was born in Tondo, Manila on December 2, 1946 to parents Esteban Bautista and
Gloria Torres. She studied in public schools, both in her elementary and high school years. She
graduated from the Emilio Jacinto Elementary School in 1964 and from Torres High School in
1968. While studying in the Lyceum of the Philippines, she took the course of which she had no
interest, and eventually stopped schooling. She started writing while she was still 16 years old,
and was mainly influenced by her parents who were into composing and poem-writing. Her first
stories were published in the magazine, Liwayway. She was the vice-president of the
Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and the chair of the
KapisananngmgaManunulatngNobelang Popular. She became a national fellow for fiction of the
University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1986.
Ms.Lualhati Bautista is known for her outstanding and award-winning novels. Among
these, are Gapo (1980), Dekada '70 (1983), and Bata, Bata, Pa'noKaGinawa? (1984). All of these
won the grand prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Aside from this,
she has written numerous poems and short stories, some of which were compiled in an
anthology. In addition to being a novelist, Lualhati Bautista is also a movie and television
scriptwriter and a short story writer. Her first screenplay is Sakada (Seasonal Sugarcane
Workers), a story written in 1972 that exposed the plight of Filipino peasants. Copies of the
script were even confiscated by the military. As a writer, Lualhati Bautista received recognition
from the Philippine's Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and then the
SurianngWikangPambansa in 1987.
WORKS:
Gapo
Dekada ‘70
Bata, Bata, Pa’noKaGinawa
Bulaklaksa City Jail
Kung Mahahawi Man angUlap
F. SIONIL JOSE
Born on December 3, 1924, F. Sionil Jose is one of the most widely-read Filipino writers
in the English language. His works have been translated into 22 languages including Korean,
Chinese, Indonesian, and Russian.
His works are usually replete with social underpinnings on the class struggles as well as
the colonialism in Philippine society. Even as a young kid, Jose already had a firm understanding
about justice, corruption, inequality, and other social issues. He learned much from growing up
in a somewhat destitute living condition in Barrio Cabugawan in Rosales, Pangasinan. Jose was
of Ilocano descent; his family migrated to Pangasinan before his birth. To flee from poverty, his
family traveled from Ilocos towards Cagayan Valley, through the Santa Fe Trail, bringing with
them their lifetime possessions including uprooted molave posts of their old houses and their
alsong, a stone mortar for pounding rice.
After World War II, Jose tried to further develop his writing by taking up classes at the
University of Santo Tomas, but he dropped out. Instead, he was swept by the whirlpool of the
journalism world in Manila. He edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a
publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for
writers.
Even though he has received numerous awards and recognitions such as the CCP
Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999, the Outstanding Fulbrighters Award for Literature in
1988, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative
Communication Arts in 1980, and has been one of the most critically-acclaimed Filipino authors
internationally, Jose is somehow underrated in the Philippines because of his authentic Filipino
English and his anti-elite views.
NOVELS:
Po-on
The Pretenders
My Brother, My Executioner
Mass
Tree
Gagamba
Sin
BOB ONG
This author is considered the mass-market mystery man, a publishing phenomenon whose
blockbuster book sales are equaled only by the anonymity he maintains. He is Bob Ong—not his
real name—the most unusual best-selling Filipino author you’ve never met.
His defunct BobongPinoy website received a People’s Choice Philippine Web Award for
Weird/Humor in 1998. His books are a favorite among Filipinos of all classes and among
students—even if they’re not required reading. He has never appeared at any book launching, not
even his own, nor on TV. That Ong has achieved such success in an age when celebrity is often a
requisite of effective marketing is indicative of his following. But the fact that he has
successfully kept his true identity a secret is even more astounding.
At one time, it was rumored that award-winning poet Paolo Manalo is the real Bob Ong.
The literary editor at the Philippines Free Press who teaches literature at the University of the
Philippines denies this. “I’m flattered that people think I’m Bob Ong but I’m not him,” he says.
BOOKS:
ABNKKBSNPLAko?!
BakitBaligtadMagbasangLibroangmga Filipino
AngPaboritongLibroniHudas
AlamatngGubat
Stainless Longganisa
Macarthur
Kapitan Sino
AngmgaKaibiganni Mama Susan
GINA APOSTOL
Gina Apostol studied at the University of the Philippines and at Johns Hopkins Universi-
ty. She was born in Manila, grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, and lives in New York. Her first novel,
Bibliolepsy, won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Fiction in 1998. To write
her novels, she has received fellowships from Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for
Writers in Scotland; the George Bennett Fellowship of Phillips Exeter Academy; and the
CivitellaRanieriCenter in Umbria, Italy. In 2009, Anvil Manila published The Revolution
According to Raymundo Mata, the first of a projected trilogy of novels on the Philippine
revolutionary period. Apostol is currently working on Rizal’s Sucesos, a novel set in London
involving Jack the Ripper and a host of incubus-texts from the British Museum.
WORKS:
Bibliolepsy
Charlie Chan is Dead 2
The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
LAKAMBINI A. SITOY
Lakambini A. Sitoy has published two collections of short stories: Mens Rea and Other
Stories, published by Anvil Manila in 1999 and winner of a Manila Critics Circle National Book
Award that year, and Jungle Planet, published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2006.
Her first novel, Sweet Haven, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008. She
received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United
Kingdom in 2003. Her short stories have appeared in Philippine magazines and anthologies, and
in Wake, an anthology published in Britain to benefit victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast
Asia, and Ansigter, an anthology of Southeast Asian short stories published by ForlagetHjulet in
Copenhagen in 2008. As a journalist, Sitoy served as lifestyle editor and columnist for the
Manila Times. She has won nine Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards.
WORKS:
Sweet Haven
Mens Rea and Other Stories
Jungle Planet
FH BATACAN
The leading proponent of Philippine literary crime fiction, FH Batacan or Maria Felisa H.
Batacan is a Filipino journalist who has been based in Singapore since 2000. Before moving to
Singapore, she did current affairs work for Philippine television networks. Prior to a career in
journalism, she spent nearly a decade working in a government intelligence agency. Her first
novel Smaller and Smaller Circles won the Palanca Award for the Novel in 2001, was published
by the UP Press in 2002, and received both the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award and
the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award. Batacan studied classical guitar for seven years
at the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music and the Asian Institute for Liturgy
and Music.
WORKS: