HOT OFF THE PRESS Literary Readings, FilAm Book Festival, October 12 - 13, 2019

12/21 Statement from Cecilia Manguerra Brainard regarding PAWA and Hot Off the Press Literary Readings: Please be informed that I will no longer be working on future Hot Off the Press Literary Readings (HOTP) and other programs with the San Francisco group PAWA (also known as PAWA, Inc.).  This group is also known as Philippine American Writers and Artists, Filipino American International Book Festival, Filbookfestival.org. You can contact me directly for more information.

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Filipino and Filipino American authors with recent published books will showcase their books at the HOT OFF THE PRESS Literary Readings at the Fifth Filipino American International Book Festival at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102, on Saturday October 12, 2019 at 12:45  pm and at 4 p.m.

The readers are:

Koret Auditorium, 12:45 - 2 p.m.

Walter Ang, Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, Cecilia Brainard, Aileen Cassinetto, EJR David, Cindy Fazzi, Elmer Omar Bascos, Grace Talusan, Alfred A. Yuson, Criselda Yabes

Koret Auditorium, 4- 5:15 p.m.

Arlene Biala, Jacqueline Chio-Lauri, Rin Chupeco, Melinda Luisa de Jesus, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Yves Lamson, Rck Rocamora,  Ricco Siosoco,  Leny Strobel

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Here are some featured writers who will be performing at HOTP Literary Readings.

Walter Ang, author of Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History

Walter Ang is the author of Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History. He currently covers Filipino American theater for the Inquirer.net and was a contributing writer for the Theater Volume for the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (CCP).

Before moving to the US, he covered the Manila theater industry for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Ang was a juror for the Philstage organization's Gawad Buhay theater awards from 2008 to 2009. He was a Fellow at the 2009 University of Santo Tomas Varsitarian-J. Elizalde Navarro National Workshop on Arts and Humanities Criticism Writing. Visit WordsOfWalter.blogspot.com

Walter Ang's Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History 

from 1898 to 2016.

Research and interviews follow the the artists who were part of the seminal Filipino American theater groups and pioneering Asian American theater companies of the 1960s and 1970s. The book continues with the establishing of Filipino American theater companies in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Ma-Yi Theater in New York, CIRCA-Pintig in Chicago, and Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco. It also includes information on Obie Award and Tony Award winners, as well as the emerging groups and leaders of the 2000s and 2010s.

Arlene Biala, author of ONE INCH PUNCH (Word Tech Communications Word Poetry imprint, 2019)

Arlene Biala is a Pinay poet and performance artist born in San Francisco and raised in the South Bay. She has been participating in poetry performances and workshops in the Bay Area for over 30 years and was Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County for 2016 and 2017. Her poetry has been described as "grounded in ritual object and ritual practice, mantras that resonate within the body, and plant the body firmly in the world." She is the author of several collections of poetry: bone, continental drift, and her beckoning hands, which won the 2015 American Book Award.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, author of Please, San Antonio! & Melisande in Paris (PALH 2018); When the Rainbow Goddess Wept (Philippine Edition University of Santo Tomas Publishing House 2019)  

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard draws inspiration from her birth city of Cebu, Philippines.  Her three novels and numerous stories are often set in her mythical Ubec (Cebu backwards).  Her first novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, in print for 28 years has been recently reissued in the Philippines by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House.  Her official website is ceciliabrainard.com.

When the Rainbow Goddess Wept (USTPH 2019) is a coming of age story of a young girl in the Philippines during World War Two.  It is published in the US by the University of Michigan Press and in the Philippines by the UST Publishing House.

Please, San Antonio! & Melisande in Paris (PALH 2018) collects two novellas by Eve La Salle Caram and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. Cecilia’s story in this collection focuses on the backstory in Paris of French character who appears in her third novel, The Newspaper Widow. 

Aileen Cassinetto, author of The Pink House of Purple Yam (Our Own Voice and Little Dove Books, 2019); and Speak Poetry Anthology, Volume 1 (San Mateo County Libraries, 2019)

Aileen Cassinetto is the Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, the first Asian American appointed to the post. She is the author of the poetry collections Traje de Boda and The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems, as well as three chapbooks through Moria Books’ acclaimed Locofo series. She is also the publisher of Paloma Press, a literary press established in 2016 which has released 17 books to date, by authors which include Eileen Tabios, Albert Alejo, Cynthia Buiza, Gabriela Igloria, Ivy Alvarez, Melinda Luisa de Jesus, Lily Mendoza, Lisa Suguitan Melnick, Leny Strobel, Reme Grefalda, Wesley St. Jo, Renato Redentor Constantino, among others.

The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems (Our Own Voice & Little Dove Books, 2018) is a collection of poetry and prose written over a period of 20 years. From Asia to Europe to America, it is a sketch of scenes already vanishing. More importantly, it is about engaging cultures and landscapes, as well as fortified domestic spaces and the lives lived within them.

Speak Poetry, Vol. 1 (San Mateo County Libraries, 2019) is a poetry campaign and an anthology of poems edited by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto. It features 23 poets and poems based on the theme, “community.”

Jacqueline Chio-Lauri, author of The New Filipino Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Around the Globe (Agate Surrey, 2018)

 

Jacqueline Chio-Lauri is the anthologist and editor, and one of the contributing authors of 2019 Midwest and Eric Hoffer Book Awards winner, The New Filipino Kitchen, an anthology of stories and recipes from around the globe.

Jacqueline has more than eight years’ experience in the food industry. She has opened and managed restaurants at deluxe hotels, such as Shangri-La and Sheraton. While working in Dubai, she was one of the five young women professionals featured in Emirates Woman magazine in a special report, “Why the Future Is Female.”

Jacqueline’s writing has been published in anthologies, such as Chicken Soup for the Soul: Find Your Inner Strength. A short memoir she wrote, “Good for One,” won the short memoir writing competition at WomensMemoirs.com and was published in the anthology Tales of Our Lives: Fork in the Road.

She lives in Manchester, UK, her 7th country of residence.

Chio-Lauri's book, The New Filipino Kitchen, named a favorite cookbook of 2018 by the San Francisco Chronicle, is a multifaceted, nuanced introduction to the world of Filipino food and food culture. It collects 30 stories and recipes from Filipinos in the diaspora, with contributions from the White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, Bocuse d’Or Europe 2018 winner Christian André Pettersen, 2015 MasterChef New Zealand runner-up Leo Fernandez, five-time Palanca Award winner and poet Francis Macansantos, and the “Food Buddha” Rodelio Aglibot.

Rin Chupeco, author of The Shadowglass (Sourcebooks, 2019)

Erin "Rin" Chupeco is a Chinese Filipino writer of young adult fiction, best known for her The Bone Witch and The Girl from the Well series. The Shadowglass, the dramatic finale to The Bone Witch series, was released in 2019 by Sourcebooks. Her most recent publication, The Never Tilting World (2019, Harper Collins), is an epic YA fantasy duology presenting a world split between day and night in which two sisters must unite it.

As a child, Chupeco was fascinated with ghost stories, saying that she was drawn in by absolute injustice of Japanese tales that tend to favor male aggressors and never end positively for women. Her favorite story is that of the kuchisake-onna.

Prior to becoming an author, Chupeco worked as a graphic designer. She is married and lives with her husband and two children in Manila.

EJR David, Ph.D., author of The Psychology of Oppression (Springer), and We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet (State University of New York Press, 2018) 

E.J.R. David was born in the Philippine, and grew up in Pasay, Las Pinas, Makati, and Alaska. He obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from the University of Alaska Anchorage (2002), and Master of Arts (2004) and Doctoral (2007) Degrees in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. David is currently a Professor of Psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage, with his primary duties being with the PhD Program in Clinical-Community Psychology that has a Rural, Cultural, and Indigenous Emphasis.

Dr. David has published theoretical and empirical works on Internalized Oppression or Colonial Mentality, including Brown Skin, White Minds: Filipino -/ American Postcolonial Psychology (Information Age Publishing). Dr. David's most recent book is Internalized Oppression: The Psychology of Marginalized Groups (Springer), which is the first book to highlight the universality of internalized oppression, but at the same time acknowledges its unique manifestations and implications for various groups. He is also a contributor to Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.

Dr. David has been awarded and honored by the American Psychological Association (APA) Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues; the APA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP); the Asian American Psychological Association Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research; the Alaska Psychological Association, and the Asian American Psychological Association.

Re We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet In a series of letters to his mixed-race Koyukon Athabascan family, E. J. R. David shares his struggles, insecurities, and anxieties as a Filipino American immigrant man, husband, and father living in the lands dominated by his family’s colonizer.

Melinda Luisa de Jesus, author of peminology (Paloma Press, 2019) 

Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Chair and Associate Professor of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American Feminisms (Routledge 2005).

Her writing has appeared in: Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices; Completely Mixed Up: Mixed Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art; Approaches to Teaching Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; Radical Teacher; The Lion and the Unicorn; Ano Ba Magazine; Rigorous; Konch Magazine; Rabbit and Rose; MELUS; Meridians; The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Cultures. She is also a poet and her chapbooks, Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems, Petty Poetry for SCROTUS Girls’ with poems for Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama, Defying Trumplandia, Adios Trumplandia, James Brown’s Wig and Other Poems, and Vagenda of Manicide and Other Poems were published by Locofo Chaps/Moria Poetry in 2017.

Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was recently published by Paloma Press (March 2019). She is a mezzo-soprano, a mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty. More info: http://peminist.com


Cindy Fazzi, author of My MacArthur, Sand Hill Review Press 2019



Cindy Fazzi is a Filipino-American writer and former Associated Press reporter. She has worked as a journalist in the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States. My MacArthur is her literary debut. She writes romance novels under the pen name Vina Arno. She has published two other romance novels: In His Corner (Lyrical Press 2015) and Finder Keeper of My Heart (Painted Hearts Publishing 2019). She has published short stories in Snake Nation Review, Copperfield Review, and SN Review.

Set in 1930, My MacArthur tells the love story between the fifty year old General Douglas MacArthur and an aspiring movie actress, Isabel Rosario Cooper.

Angelo Lacuesta,  Author of City Stories (Ateneo de Manila University Press 2019); A Waiting Room Companion (Ateneo 2017); and Coral Cove and Other Stories (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House 2017 – National Book Award winner)

Angelo R. Lacuesta has won many awards including three National Book Awards, the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award, the NVM Gonzalez Award and numerous Palanca and Philippines Graphic Awards.

He has written several books, including four short story collections, two non-fiction books, and a collection of graphic stories, and has participated in many writing residencies, fellowships, festivals and conferences in the Philippines and abroad.

He is Editor-at-Large at Esquire Magazine (Philippines) and Senior Editor at Panorama: the Journal of Intelligent Travel. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Philippine Chapter of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists).

As a professional creative and businessman, he founded the creative agency Logika and the digital agency Logik, as well as Good Intentions Books, a book design and publishing company.

Re his three books:

City Stories collects the author’s favorite stories, written and published over two decades. The stories all contain the urban consciousness, and are either situated in urban settings, or dwell in and on the mindset of the contemporary urban Filipino.Many of the stories have won awards.

A Waiting Room Companion (Ateneo De Manila University Press, 2017) is Lacuesta’s collection of creative non-fiction (essays, explorations, profiles); it was the finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Non-fiction.

Coral Cove and Other Stories (UST Publishing House, 2017) is Angelo R. Lacuesta’s fourth collection of fiction; it won the 2019 National Book Award for Short Fiction.

Yves Lamson, author of Bodies of Water 2019

Yves Lamson  is a first generation Filipino-Canadian writer who takes from the Philippine oral tradition to spin tales of fantastic creatures. Interested in preserving the intangible artefacts of his culture, he writes the stories down as tool to not forget, to keep the precious things safe.

Holding a Bachelors of Arts from York University, majoring both in English and Creative Writing, Yves is active member of the PLUMA Collective in Toronto, as well as The Filipino-Canadian Writers and Journalists Network.  Yves hopes to bring Philippine culture to the Canadian literary scene and beyond by way of his stories.

After the launch of Bodies of Water at the Philippine Consulate General in Toronto, BoW captured the #1 Best Selling spot on amazon.ca for Asian-Canadian fiction. BoW was published August 2018 by YETI Arts.

Born in Toronto, he lives and writes in Stouffville on his five-acre farm.

Re Bodies of Water: After the launch of this book at the Philippine Consulate General in Toronto, Bodies of Water was the Number 1 Best Seller for Asian American Fiction in Amazon Canada. Bodies of Water is the first of a planned trilogy, with a companion fourth book to cap off the series.

Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo, author of Leaving Shadow Behind Us (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2019 http://www.bambooridge.com/storeitem.aspx?pid=134 )


Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo comes from a family of farmers, teachers, and religious leaders in the Philippines. A former Anglican seminarian, he graduated in 1981 from Benguet State University with a degree in agriculture. After teaching poultry production, he went to Saudi Arabia to work as a greenhouse agriculturist. He began journaling to record the cruel working conditions he encountered there.

On the day he returned to the Philippines, the bus he was in had a head-on collision with another bus. Six passengers died, including the elderly woman seated next to him. Pizo suffered a concussion and lost his short-term memory. His neurologist suggested that he write as part of his therapy so, referring to his journal, he began writing poems, some of which appear in this collection. Pizo was a Poetry Fellow at the 2000 Silliman National Writers Workshop in the Philippines and at the Vermont Studio Center in 2006.

His poems have been widely published. His most recent reading on August 1st this year was at the Eaton during the Asian American Literary Festival in Washington DC as sponsored by the Smithsonian.

Re: LEAVING OUR SHADOWS BEHIND US is a debut poetry collection by Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo which recounts experiences growing up in the Philippines, years as a migrant worker living under harsh conditions in the Middle East, and eventual immigration to Hawai'i. 

Betty Ann Quirino, author of Instant Filipino Recipes Cookbook; My Mother's Traditional Food in a Multicooker Pot (Amazon.com, 2018) 

Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, is an award-winning international journalist and author of her most recent cookbook Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot. Other cookbooks she has written are: My Mother’s Philippine Recipes and How To Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks. 

Betty Ann was born in the Philippines and raised in Tarlac province where her way of life was molded early on by her parents’ farming and agricultural business. From the time she was a little girl, Betty Ann learned how to cook traditional Philippine dishes from her mother and has transformed these culinary skills to modern day Filipino cooking in her American kitchen. Based in New Jersey, Betty Ann is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP-New York); the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance; the Association of Culinary Historians of the Philippines, and blogs about Filipino home cooking on her site AsianInAmericaMag.com.

Ricco Villanueva Siasoco, author of The Foley Artist (Gaudy Boy, 2019)

Ricco Villanueva Siasoco is a writer, educator, and activist. He received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and he has taught at Boston College, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts College of Art. Ricco has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction, Lambda Literary, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a board member of Kundiman, a national literary organization dedicated to Asian American literature. Ricco lives in Los Angeles. The Foley Artist is his first book.

Re The Foley Artist: At once deliciously bizarre and painfully familiar, The Foley Artist introduces a vital new voice to Asian American literature. Ricco Villanueva Siasoco's powerful debut collection opens new regions of American feeling and thought as it interrogates intimacy, foreignness, and silence in an absurd world.

These nine stories give voice to the intersectional identities of women and men in the Filipino diaspora in America: a straight woman attends her ex-boyfriend's same-sex marriage in coastal Maine; a college-bound teenager encounters his deaf uncle in Manila; Asian American drag queens duke it out in the annual Iowa State Fair; a seventy-nine-year-old foley artist recreates the sounds of life, but is finally unable to save himself.

Rck Rocamora, author of Human Wrongs, and Filipino WWII Soldiers -- America's Second-Class Veterans

 

Rck Rocamora is an award-winning documentary photographer and author of four photobooks; Filipino WWII Soldiers – America’s Second- Class Veterans; Blood, Sweat and Hope in Quiapo; Rodallie S. Mosende Story: Human Wrongs which documents the overcrowding and inhumane conditions in Philippine Detention Centers, and Alagang Angara, a photobook honoring the legislative legacy of Senator Ed Angara and now continued by his son, Senator Sonny Angara. 

Most of his published and exhibited works centers on issues of Human Rights, Social Justice and Equality. His work is part of the permanent collection of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, U.S. State Department Art in Embassies program, and private and institutional collections. His work is widely exhibited in national and international museums and galleries and published in the US and International print and online news.

Leny Strobel. author of Glimpses (Paloma Press, 2019)  

Leny Mendoza Strobel is Professor Emeritus of American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University. She is also one of the Founding Directors of the Center for Babaylan Studies. Her books, journal articles, online media presence reflect her decades-long study and reflections on the process of decolonization and healing of colonial trauma through the lens of indigenous perspectives. She is a grandmother to Noah and she tends a garden and chickens with Cal in Northern California. More information is available at https://www.lenystrobel.com/.

Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers (Restless Books, 2019)

Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. She is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. She has published in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Boston Magazine, Boston Globe, The Rumpus, and others. The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is her first book.

Re The Body Papers: Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.


Criselda Yabes, author of Broken Islands (Ateneo de Manila University Press 2019), and Crying Mountain (Penguin SE Asia 2019)

Criselda Yabes is a seasoned journalist and award winning author and journalist. She has worked as an international Correspondent for the Associated Press, Newsweek, Reuters, The Washington Post and The Economist covering political insurgencies, rebellion and coup d'etats in the Philippines as well as war and crises across the globe. She was born in Quezon City and spent her early years growing up in Zamboanga and there developed an affection for the Muslim Region which is a favourite subject for her literary works. She graduated from the University of the Philippines. She is the author of five published books, the most recent of which, 'Peace Warriors' is about literary journalism regarding military affairs in the Muslim Mindanao Region which won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 2012.

Her novel, Broken Islands, is her recent novel. It follows Crying Mountain which won the UP Centennial Literary Award and was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. 

Alfred Yuson, author of The Music Child & The Mahjong Queen, 2016; Co-editor of Bloodlust: Philippine Protest Poetry (From Marcos to Duterte) 2018

Alfred A. Yuson has authored over 30 books, including  novels, poetry collections, short fiction, essays, children’s stories, biographies and coffee-table books, apart from having edited various other titles, including several literary anthologies. His work has been translated into 10 languages. 

He has gained numerous distinctions, including the 2009 Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from UMPIL, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan award, a Rockefeller Foundation grant for residency at the Bellagio in Italy, and the SEAWrite for lifetime achievement. He has also been elevated to the Hall of Fame of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. His latest distinction is the 2018 Gawad Dangal ng Lahi from the Palanca Foundation. He has enjoyed fellowships in various international writing programs, and participated in literary conferences, festivals and reading tours worldwide. He also won a FAMAS Award and a Catholic Mass Media Award for his film screenplay. 

His “The Music Child” was shortlisted for the MAN Asia Prize for the Novel; an expanded version titled The Music Child and the Mahjong Queen won the 2017 National Book Award for the Novel in English.

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Stay tuned for more announcements re the HOTP literary Readings at the Filipino American International Book Festival this October.

Guidelines to Readers:
Please be at the Koret Auditorium 10 minutes before performance time. We will have a photoshoot before the program starts. Please sit in the front row near the stage. Each reader will have 7 minutes reading time, including any introduction or comments. A volunteer will hold up a warning card when your time is ending, but please keep track of your reading time and don't go over your time allotment out of courtesy to the other readers and audience.

Cecilia Brainard, moderator and host, will introduce each reader. She will mention your book, but will not describe the book. Please make sure Cecilia has all that information.  There is book signing after the reading.  Make sure you have enough books to make available for the 2 day FilAmBookFest.

Tags: FilAm, Filipino, books, literature, authors, writers, food, history, academic, pinoy, #FilAmLitFest #FilamBookfest

Read also:  Recap of Hot Off the Press Literary Readings -- https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2019/10/recap-of-hot-off-press-readings-at.html

Inquirer.net: Int'l Book Festival in SF to Gather Filipino Authors

Philippine Star, Krip Yuson's Recap: "Humanity, Diversity & Resistance in the Arts
https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/arts-and-culture/2019/10/21/1961796/humanity-diversity-resistance-arts?fbclid=IwAR1oKYIMUwj5r4PsJ-DgcWh0mIMEHbUQ7H_4OyNuhKAgLyEc1zX7ybVaG8Q

You can watch the entire first HOTP reading on Facebook streamed by Tony Robles:

https://www.facebook.com/tony.robles.330/videos/10156415101611975/?fref=gs&dti=400193900082870&hc_location=group

The order of the readers are: Aileen Cassinetto, Walter Ang, Betty Ann Quirino, Cindy Fazzi, Grace Talusan, EJ,Ramos David, Elmer Omar, Criselda Yabes, Krip Yuson, & Cecilia Brainard -- you can scroll ahead to find the reader.