An Afternoon with Exploding Galaxies, with Carlo Bulosan Book Club, PALH

 

Some photos taken at the book launch of Wilfrido Nolledo and Linda Ty-Casper's novels -- An Afternoon with Exploding Galaxies, Nov. 16, 2024, sponsored by the Carlos Bulosan Book Club and Friends of the Echo Park Library of LA.

Top photo - Seated: L-R. Cecilia Brainard, Blanca Nolledo , Velinda Rockello, Myrla Baldonado

Standing: L-R James Castillo, Noel Alumit, Ruel Nolledo, Orlando Nolledo, Jaime Geaga, David Rockello

Next photo - seated left is Swapna Pawar

Third photo shows Mrs. Nolledo talking to Belinda Rockello

Fourth photo shows Ruel Nolledo, Cecilia Brainard, and Mrs.Nolledo.

Here's the link to the video of the literary event: An Afternoon with Exploding Galaxies, launch of novels by Linda Ty-Casper (Three Cornered Sun) and Wilfrido Nolledo (But for the Lovers);

 

https://youtu.be/8wIDXqBsdHk?feature=shared

How I Became a Writer - Paulino Lim, Jr - Filipino FilAm Series #2

 

 

Paulino Lim, Jr. Copyright Paulino Lim, Jr.

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share Dr. Paulino Lim's Essay on HOW I BECAME A WRITER. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. Cecilia Brainard and PALH have permission from the authors to use their materials here. 

 ***

DR. PAULINO LIM, JR was born in the Philippines on August 23, 1935. He is an emeritus professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. In 2016 he was the recipient of a Philippine Presidential Award for Outstanding Filipino Individuals Overseas, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from his alma mater University of Santo Tomas, Manila. 

***

***

SEÑORA MUÑOZ, daughter of a conquistador, conducted a kindergarten school for the children in the neighborhood, me included. I was five-years-old at the time. She taught us the alphabet, how to combine letters, and speak out the syllables: b, a, ba; l, e, le.

Señora lived with her family in a two-story mansion in Camalig in the province of Albay, Philippines.  Across the street was a plaza that fronted a 17th-century church. It was a joy to see in print the syllables and words that you hear. Because the American colonizers had decreed English to be the medium of instruction in public schools, with the indigenous language of the region (Bisaya, Bikol, Ilocano, Tagalog) taught as a subject, the pupils read bilingually.

There were more texts in English than Bicol, my native language. My Catholic high school St. John's Academy had volumes of the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Zane Grey, and Tarzan series. It also had copies of the National Geographic, with pictures of naked natives whose breasts were blotted out with black ink.

When you read, you become aware of how words are put together to express an idea. An idea may be an object you perceive and give it a name or a word that you, perhaps, already know, e.g., lily. You name its color “white” and compare its shape to a “trumpet,” that evokes the sound of a cavalry or jazz music. The cavalry and jazz create images in your mind, or imagination.

Imagination is one of the mind’s faculties as perception, memory, speculation, and judgment. Imagination creates mental images in the same way a painter creates visual images, or a jazz musician produces aural images.

Memory recalls past events or persons and awakens feelings and emotions. Speculation looks at a future event and its possible outcomes. Judgment looks at evidence, as in the courtroom, resulting in a certainty of it being true, but subject to revision when new evidence turns up. 

Carlos Roxas Interview of Cecilia Brainard re Frankfurt Book Fair

 

The Visayan group, from left: Kris Porio from Komiket, Jerrold Madridano, Susanne Rexrodt-Madridano, Hope Sabanpan-Yu , Julius Relampagos; Front row, l-r Cecilia Brainard, Dinah Roma.

 

Following are the articles by Carlos Roxas, published in Sunstar Cebu. Many thanks to Inigo Carlos Roxas for his zoom interview and writeup. 

 Correction: Cecilia Brainard was part of a panel entitled "Can Fiction Change the World"; RM Topacio Aplaon is the correct name - apologies

Part 1

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/cecilia-brainard-join-historical-frankfurt-book-fair-2024

l-r: Eliza Victoria, Khavn de la Cruz, Cecilia Brainard, RM Topacio Aplaon 

Part 2

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/cecilia-brainard-joins-historical-frankfurt-book-fair-2024-conclusion

 

READ also Cecilia's Report re Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2024/10/cecilia-brainards-travel-report-of-fbm24.html 

Watch Excerpt from LitProm's Glimpses into Philippine Writing and Publishing - Cecilia Brainard Talks about her novel, The Newspaper Widow  

More pictures from FBM24 

 

Photo of delegates after Turnover from Italy to the Philippines

 

photo courtesy of NBDB, l-r: Cecilia Brainard, Ned Parfan, Butch Dalisay, Beng Dalisay

 

Philippine reception, l-r: Hope Sabanpan-Yu, Senja Pozar (standing), Cecilia Brainard, Prashant Pathak

 

l-r: Anthony Balisi, Consul Mary Luck Hicarte, Cecilia Brainard

l-r: Cecilia Brainard, Barbel Becker, Petra Hardt 

l-r: Karina Bolasco, Ambeth Ocampo, Hope Sabanpan-Yu, Cecilia Brainard

l-r: Hope Sabanpan-Yu, Mara Coson, Cecilia Brainard, Ester Tapia

Group photo with Patricia Evangelista, author of Some People Need Killing -- Seated l-r: Ned Parfan, Patricia Evangelista; Standing l-r: Cecilia Brainard, Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Karina Bolasco, Stephanie Coo, Rica Bolipata Santos, Ivy Banzon Abalos (Consul General).

Photo after the Philippine Press Conference, l-r: Jacobo, Kristian Cordero, Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Karina Bolasco, Cecilia Brainard, Nida Ramirez, Guest, Guest

Philippine Reception l-r: Cecilia Brainard, Senja Pozar, Zala Stanonik, Mara Coson

Photo courtesy of NBDB l-r: Mara Coson, Ned Parfan, Senja Pozar, Cecilia Brainard, Zala Stanonik

l-r: Ned Parfan, Senja Pozar, Zala Stanonik, Cecilia Brainard, Mara Coson

l-r: Petra Hardt, Dimistri Tsoukatos, Cecilia Brainard, Senja Pozar, Zala Stanonik

Cecilia Brainard and Renato Tranquilino with Wiki Germany folk

Cecilia Brainard and Gene Alcantara

Paolo Herras and Cecilia Brainard

Charisse Aquino Tugade and Cecilia Brainard

 

Cecilia Brainard and Patricia Evangelista

Tina Pangan, Cecilia Brainard, Dimitri Tsoukatos

l-r: Arvin Sia, Cecilia Brainard, Gina Soriano, Edna Santos

l-r: Yasmin Arquiza, Cecilia Brainard, Hope Sabanpan-Yu

l-r: Eliza Victoria, Khavn de la Cruz, Cecilia Brainard, RM Topacio Aplaon

L-r: Khavn de la Cruz, Eliza Victoria, RK Topacio Aplaon, Dominator Buhain, Cecilia Brainard, Kristian Cordero, Sonia Santiago

l-r: Hope Sabanpan-Yu, Julius Relampagos, Cecilia Brainard

photo courtesy of NBDB l-r: Ester Tapia, Charisse Aquino Tugarde, Cecilia Brainard, Hope Sabanpan-Yu

Hope Sabanpan-Yu and Cecilia Brainard

Tags: #FBM24,  Frankfurt book fair, Philippine delegation to Frankfurt Book Fair

How I Became a Writer - Ian Rosales Casocot - Filipino FilAm Series #1

Ian Rosales Casocot, Copyright by Ian Rosales Casocot. 

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to kick off my Guest Blog Series featuring Filipino and FilAm Americans writing on the topic: HOW I BECAME A WRITER.  Please stay tuned because I'll be featuring more accomplished writers here. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. Cecilia Brainard and PALH have permission from the authors to use their materials here. To start us off, here is IAN ROSALES CASOCOT 

***

 Ian Rosales Casocot is the author of Don’t Tell Anyone, Bamboo Girls, Heartbreak & Magic, and Beautiful Accidents. He has won the Palanca nine times for his fiction, plays, and children’s poetry. In 2008, his novel Sugar Land was longlisted in the Man Asian Literary Prize. He was Writer-in-Residence for the International Writers Program of the University of Iowa in 2010. He is based in Dumaguete City

***

WHEN MOST WRITERS are asked to explain why they write, they evoke the usual responses: they are heeding the call of the archetypal storyteller, and they are perhaps also trying to approximate the divinity of creation. Thomas Berger once famously said, “Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there”—with such pronouncements, the writer aims to be God-like in the piecing together of a universe peculiar to his literature.

But the Pulitzer Prize-winning James A. Michener may have said it best when he tried to explain why he wrote stories: “I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.”

            I like that word “obligation” that Michener uses, because the fact of the matter is—and this all of us here may know to be a throbbing truth—nobody really forces anybody to write stories, and in fact one can handily go through life without knowing how it is like to write well, or to read well.

            And yet we write. And we back our choices up by constructing a sense of personal aesthetics that would explain why indeed we write, and why we write what we do write.

Tony Perez Portrait of Cecilia Brainard

I work at my computer just a couple of arms length away from this oil portrait by the artist/writer/master Tony Perez. I have been studying this portrait and admiring it, appreciating how difficult it is to create something big (for one thing) and get the proportions right, how challenging to get the expression right, and so on.

Tony and I first met years ago, when the US embassy awarded me with a travel grant; my first novel had just come out and the US embassy sent me on abook lecture to Mindanao, Baguio, and Manila of course. Tony and Tanya Anderson took care of me. I recall that there were teachers who traveled for 6 to 8 hours by bus to attend the lecture. I was amazed.

Tony is a psychic apart from his other gifts, and we had great talks about supernatural phenomena. One of the things he did was organize a "Ghost buster" type of group at the Ateneo, and they would go to haunted houses and send away the ghost or spirit haunting the place.

I recall Tony saying our hotel in Zamboanga had a ghost. I didn't feel the presence of the ghost -- I sometimes do --- but I thought that it was really fun, to have a ghost in your hotel while on a book tour.

These are some thoughts that come to my mind as I look at Tony's work of me -- his creativity, his broad interests and gifts are impressive.

Here are some pictures of his "Cecilia Brainard" which he includes in his gallery of Philippine writers.

Hi, Tony, thanks for the wonderful painting, and all the pleasant memories.

tags: Filipino art, Filipino artist, TonyPerez gallery

Cecilia Brainard's Travel Report of Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 #FBM24

 

l-r: Hope Sabanpan-Yu (Cebuano Studies Center), Senja Pozar (literary agent), Cecilia Brainard, Prashant Pathak (PublishersvWithout Borders)

Travel Report of Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 (Oct 15-21)

By Cecilia Manguerra Brainard 

Tues. October 15, 2024 – I arrived Frankfurt at 10:45 am and by 3 pm was at the Philippine National stand to join the other delegates attending the 5 pm Opening Ceremony of the 76^th Frankfurt Buchmesse with Italy as Guest of Honor. (The Philippines will be the Guest of Honor in 2025.)

Entrance was strict, with an invitation pass and ID required to get in. The 2 and ½ hour event had three or four terrific speeches. Most touched on the importance of books during these dangerous times of threatening autocracy.

There was a bit of drama when 2 people stood up, one yelled at the Italian speaker, and 4 people walked out. Apparently this was politically-motivated. Last year's outburst was reportedly worse.

 

l-r: Consul Mary Luck Hicarte, Cecilia Brainard, Consul Mina Ganzon

l-r: Anthony Balisi (Director NBDB), Consul Hicarte holding Linda Ty-Casper's book about her husband Leonard Ralph Casper; Cecilia