Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia -- Dr. Charlie Veric Interviews Cecilia Brainard

 

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia  16:1 (2026)

On Writing, Diaspora, and Translation: Interview with Cecilia Manguerra Brainard by Dr. Charlie Samuya Veric

For complete transcript, click on link below:

https://archium.ateneo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1481&context=paha

Born and raised in Cebu, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the awardwinning author and editor of over twenty-two books, including the novels When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena, and The Newspaper Widow, and her Selected Short Stories. Brainard has worked with Asian American youths for which she received a Special Recognition Award from the Los Angeles Board of Education. She has also received awards from the California State Senate, 21st District, several USIS Grants, a California Arts Council Fellowship, an Outstanding Individual Award from the City of Cebu, Philippines, Brody Arts Fund Award, a City of Los Angeles Cultural grant, and many more. The books she has written and edited have also won awards, the Philippine National Book Award, the Gintong Aklat Award and the International Gourmand Award, among others. Her novels and Selected Short Stories have been translated into Arabic, Azerbaijani, Greek, Japanese, North Macedonian, Portuguese, Serbian, Turkish, and Slovenian, ranking her among the Top Translated Filipino Authors of the Philippine Works and Translation Data Base. 

Some short stories of hers have been translated into Finnish. She runs a small press, PALH or Philippine American Literary House. What follows is a transcript of a public interview by Charlie Samuya Veric, which preceded an open forum and the launch of the reprint of Linda Ty-Casper’s A Small Party in the Garden. These events were funded by the Kwan Laurel Fund for the Humanities and organized by the Literary and Cultural Studies Program of the Ateneo de Manila University, in cooperation with the Ateneo Archive of Philippine Literature in English, the Ateneo Martial Law Museum and Library, the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings, Kritika Kultura, the Ateneo Department of Fine Arts of the Ateneo de Manila University, and the student literary organization Plume.  

Continue in Ateneo de Manila link.

The talk was on February 19, 2026, 5 pm at the NGF Conference Room, Horacio de la Costa Hall, Ateneo de Manila University, QC.  

READ ALSO:

Ateneo Students Reponses 2026- Linda Ty-Casper's Book Launch 

Cecilia Brainard & Linda Ty-Casper Events at Ateneo Literary and Cultural Studies Program 
Released: Linda Ty-Casper's A Small Party in a Garden: Revised and Critical Edition 

Was Linda Ty-Casper Really a Saling-Pusa - Article about Ty-Casper in Postively Filipino

Gardens and Mountains of Philippine Literature by Charlie Samuya Veric 

Cecilia Brainard Fiction: The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair  

            Cecilia Brainard Fiction: After the Ascension 

            Cecilia Brainard's The Journey

            Celebrating Translations of  Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Fiction

Tags: #booksphilippines #martiallawphilippines #marcosdictatorship #Filipinonovels #Ateneodemanila #ateneouniversity

Writing Amid the Babel of Books by Vicente L. Rafael - How I Became a Writer 2

The book, How I Became a Writer : Essays by Filipino and Filipino American Writers 2 (Edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, published by Vibal 2026) will be released in September of this year. The book will be launched in Cebu and Manila; details are forthcoming.

I am sharing this essay by Professor Vicente L. Rafael who unfortunately passed away last February 21, 2026.  He had sent his essay soon after I put out the Call in December 2025. Dr. Rafael is one of 25 contributors to the collection, How I Became a Writer 2 ~ Cecilia Brainard, Editor

VICENTE L. RAFAEL (1956-2026)

BIO:  VICENTE L. RAFAEL was Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research and teaching focused mostly on the comparative political and cultural history of the Philippines, the United States and Southeast Asia.

He wrote The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (2022). The rest of his books include Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (1988/1993), White Love and Other Events in Filipino Histories (2000), The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (2005), “Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation (2016), all published by Duke University and co-published in the Philippines by Ateneo University Press.

He also edited Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays in Filipino Cultures (1995) and Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines and Colonial Vietnam (1999).  Rafael also wrote the Introduction to a collection of Nick Joaquin’s stories, The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic published by Penguin Classics (2017). 

Rafael also writes op-ed columns for Rappler, The Daily Inquirer in the Philippines, and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books in the US. He waw the recipient of numerous awards both abroad and in the Philippines, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Social Science Research Council Fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship, and residencies at the Stanford Humanities Center, Univ. of California, Irvine Humanities Center, East-West Center in Honolulu, and several others. After graduating with a PhD in History and Anthropology from Cornell Univ., he taught at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa, the University of California at San Diego, Stanford University and the University of Washington, Seattle.

Vicente L. Rafael passed away on February 21, 2026, five days after his 70^th birthday. He was married to Lila Ramos Shahani. He submitted the following article in December of 2025. Copyright 2026 by Vicente L. Rafael. Reprinted with his permission.

***

 

WRITING AMID THE BABEL OF BOOKS

My practice and habits of writing have always been shaped by my reading. And most of the books I have read come from my explorations of various libraries. I could not imagine writing without the sheltering space of libraries and the enabling generosity of librarians. So let me start with an account of how libraries have been important to my writing.