Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Philippines: University of Santo Tomas and Some Words with the Wild Woman

 University of Santo Tomas and Some Words with the Wild Woman

 l-r: John Jack Wigley, Joyce Arriola, Ailil Alvarez, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Cecilia Brainard, Ralph Semino Galan, Augusto Antonio A. Aguila



l-r: Joyce Arriola, Cecilia Brainard, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Augusto Antonio Aguila

l-r: Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Joyce Arriola, Augusto Antonio Aguila, John Jack Wigley


I spent yesterday at the University of Santo Tomas where I had the opportunity to visit the special collection of rare books at the UST Miguel de Benavides Library. I was thrilled to see the collection and observe where these antique books are restored, digitalized, and catalogued. Some of these precious books date to the 1500s.  




(The UST was founded in 1611 and is one of the oldest existing universities in the Philippines and in Asia.)
The afternoon was spent at the Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies for the talk/dialogue, Some Words with the Wild Woman, featuring me. Some 500 students, professors, and guests were present for my presentation and a lively Question and Answer forum. 

I have done many literary talks but this was special in the way the organizers extended loving care and respect to this event and to me. There was a thought-out and elegant progam with esteemed professors participating in giving the opening remarks, introduction, moderating the forum, and closing remarks.  The event had a nice mix of elegant formality with levity. The kindness of their words about my work as a writer touched me deeply. Further, the students and audience were most attentive and had very interesting questions.




 I want to give special thanks to Professors Ma. Ailil V. Alvarez, Augusto Antonio A. Aguila, Joyce Arriola, Ralph Semino Galan, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Chuckberry Pascual, John Jack G. Wigley, for featuring me in Some Words with the Wild Woman, a literary program sponsored by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies in cooperation wih the UST Publishing House and UST Department of Literature. 

Thanks also to Anna Nicolas for accompanying me to the Special Collections libary. And thanks to the artist who created the poster of Some Words with the Wild Woman, and to Gwenn Galvez for arranging for Anvil to make my books available to the audience.


Here are some pictures which I took, but I'll be adding more pictures so please visit this site again.












Read also
UST Varsitarian Article Re Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Tags: Philippines, Filipino, Filipina, literature, literary, author, novelist, writer, UST, University of Santo Tomas, Creative Writing, Special Collections library

This is all for now,
Cecilia

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