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.
