TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: October 2025

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Plantation Bay: Where "Real Food for Real People" Still Means Something

PLANTATION BAY: WHERE "REAL FOOD FOR REAL PEOPLE" STILL MEANS SOMETHING
by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cebu has long been known for its mangoes, lechon, and easy warmth, but tucked within its southern shores is a resort that takes food as seriously as it takes its sunsets. Plantation Bay Resort & Spa (plantationbay.com) may be best known for its lagoons and Japanese-inspired spa, yet its real revelation begins at the table.
At a time when many resorts outsource culinary direction or reduce menus to interchangeable buffets, Plantation Bay’s kitchens remain insistently personal. The guiding principle is disarmingly simple: feed people honestly, beautifully, and well. Every dish, whether humble or haute, honors that compact.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.

Top Translated Filipino Authors - Includes Cecilia Brainard

Thanks to my literary agent Senja Pozar for negotiating all but one of my foreign translations, putting me in the 'Top Translated Authors' of the Philippine Works and Translation Data base.

The data base chart, maintained by Anthony John Balisi, a project begun by the NBDB, is from September 2025.

It's dynamic and changes. In this chart I tie with Nobel Prize Winner Maria Ressa in getting 17.2 percent of the total number of translations.

I'm sharing this primarily to give credit to my literary agent Senja.

For more information:

PHtranslationdatabase@gmail.com

Read the latest (30 September 2025) update:

Academia: https://www.academia.edu/.../The_Database_of_Philippine...

Short link: https://bit.ly/PHTranslationDB2025-09

Cecilia Brainard and Senja Pozar

Read also:
Plantation Bay, A Weekend Retreat

Top Translated Filipino Authors - Includes Cecilia Brainard
Cross-cultural Exchange Via Cecilia Brainard's Translations
Press Release about foreign Translations of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Fiction
Publishers of Cecilia Brainard's Foreign Translations
Filip Batkoski (Bata Press)
Leonardo Garzaro (Editor Rua do Sabao)
Senja Pozar - Literary Agent
Dimitris Tsoukatos (Lemvos Editions)
Mohamed Radi (Egyptian Office for Publishing and Distribution
Dejan Trajkoski (Prozart Media)
Nenad Saponja (Agora)
Jale Memmedova (Qanun Publishing House)
Dr. Takuya Matsuda (Genki Shobou)

#bookphilippines

#phlgoh25

#GoH2025

#FrankfurtBookFair2025

#ImaginationPeoplestheAir

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Sunday, October 19, 2025

Cross-cultural Exchange Via Cecilia Brainard's Translations

L-r: Filip Batkoski, Senja Pozar, Nenad Saponja, Mohamed Radi, Leonardo Garzaro, and Dejan Trajkoski

Press Release -10/19/25

Cross-cultural exchange via Cecilia Brainard's Translations

The 14 foreign translations of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's three novels (When the Rainbow Goddess wept, Magdalena The Newspaper Widow) and her Selected Short Stories were celebrated on October 17, 2025. Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Fiction brought together these publishers:

Filip Batkoski (Bata Press, North Macedonia),

Leonardo Garzaro (Editora Rua do Sabao, Brazil),

Nenad Saponja (Agora, Serbia)

Mohamed Radi (Egyptian Office for Publishing and Distribution),

Dejan Trajkoski (Prozart Media, North Macedonia).

Brainard's literary agent, Senja Pozar, who also did a Slovenian translation of Brainard's novel moderated the program. She credits Cecilia Brainard's books for promoting cross-cultural exchange, which is one of the goals is the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Publishers who were not present were noted in the joyful event, including: Dimitris Tsoukatos (Lemvos Editions, Greece); Takuya Matsuda (Genki Shobou, Japan); and Jale Mammadova, (Qanun, Azerbaijan).

Watch on Youtube - https://youtu.be/VSeQFSzyjr8

India - Philippines Dialogue - Cecilia Brainard #fbm25

Via Kumar Vikram, Oct. 18, 2025

📚🌏 The India–Philippines Publishing Dialogue at the India Stage, Frankfurt Book Fair 2025, was a vital session for literary cooperation, gaining special significance as the Philippines is this year's Guest of Honour Country. The dialogue was chaired by Prof Milind Sudhakar Marathe (Chairman, National Book Trust, India) and Kumar Vikram (Chief Editor & Joint Director, NBT-India) moderated the session.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Monday, October 13, 2025

Munich-based Axel Timo Purr Interviews Cecilia Brainard - Podcast

Axel Timo Purr's interview of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is now in the podcast of his Munich-based LITERATUR REVIEW.

https://literatur.review/en/podcast/between-old-and-new-home

Between Old and New Home

By Axel Timo Purr

IF I HAD ONE MAGICAL WISH, I would give an old-school anthropologist like Fedor Jagor the chance to travel back in time to our present day. How would he deal with the encounters of this literary journey that followed his geographical traces, and how would he understand the concept of our globalised world today, which also involves people and authors leaving their country and becoming part of another culture? Like Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, who started writing as a young girl from an educated middle-class family in Cebu City and went to California as a young woman to study film - but ended up sticking with writing and becoming one of the most successful authors of the Filipino diaspora in the US. I reach her via a Zoom call at her home in Santa Monica, and despite the distance, the conversation is as close and intimate as with any author I've met on my trip.

Despite the graphical distance, Brainard is always a Filipino author; she visits the country regularly. And her stories are always stories from Cebu - albeit written in English because she was brought up in English and not in Cebuano. Nevertheless, she is certain that she would be a very different author if she had stayed in the Philippines. She may not share the fate of Thomas Mann, whose time in exile had a lasting effect on his writing and thinking, but she is also a "PhilAm" author whose novels such as The Newspaper Widow interweave memory, colonial history and female self-determination and who has also had to deal with the blessings and curses of the American publishing world: sometimes wanted, then rejected again if the sales figures are not right. She is now at peace with this; her books have also been translated into numerous other languages. She is more concerned about the decline in "high literature", even if she herself acknowledges that the new, "fashionable" genres and their authors are certainly doing their best. But like Bebang Siy, Brainard says that the Philippines needs more "serious" literature in order to get a grip on the present and future with all its crises.

And perhaps also - as Justin, a student at the Polytechnic University, told me on my last day in Manila, in the legendary bookshop Solidaridad - a new concept of culture that could hark back to the pre-colonial era, when music and lectures were still free and open to all."

Axel Timo Purr - Literatur Review

Touring New Old Town of Frankfurt #fbm2025

October 13, 2025

Touring Frankfurt

I'm in Frankfurt Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair. Specifically I'm here to celebrate 14 translations of my fiction, and to be in panels as part of the Philippine Delegation. The Philippines is the Guest of Honour this year.

But today is a free day and I visited the New Old Town of Frankfurt where I ran into Filipino writers and publishers who are also here for the #frankfurterbuchmesse . Among them are: Danton Remoto, Ige Ramos, Dean Francis Alfar, Anthony John Balisi, Tanya Yuson, Ian Rosales Casocot, Yvette Tan, and others.

I also visited the nearby area displaying a Filipino jeepney, with Filipino eating places, and stage. Business was brisk for a Monday. Talked to some charming people: a German- Filipino family, a Filipina who has lived in Germany since 1980.

I'll be blogging my visit to Frankfurt this year, so please check back.