Friday, July 03, 2026
We just had our closing ceremony for Pamati: Let the River Rest tonight, and tomorrow, the Puerto Princesa Underground River reopens and this will be my first time to experience this natural wonder. This has been a satisfying work trip for UNACOM. Every time I get asked to speak, my ADHD brain always wallows in some form of impostor’s syndrome. Will my talk make sense? Will I impart usable knowledge? Do I have the right to talk about the things I am asked to talk about? Tonight, a huge part of that doubting got erased by the responses some of the participants gave. [One even quoted me!] So, yes, I’m happy. And I’m glad I took part in this pursuit of using art and creativity to do environmental conservation. Would love to do something like this for Lake Balinsasayao. Padayon!Labels: environment, life, teaching, UNACOM, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, July 01, 2026
9:56 PM |
In Puerto Princesa
Just hazily documenting my first day in Puerto Princesa today. I flew in very early, after spending a very short night in Manila in transit to Palawan. Did not get to see much of the city proper of Puerto Princesa because I was soon whisked away by the service van provided for by UNACOM, all the way to Daluyon Beach and Mountain Resort in Sabang. I thought it would be a short ride, but to my groggy surprise, it took almost two hours to get to our destination — 75 kilometers away from the center of the city — and I thought we were in another town altogether. But nooo, I would later learn Sabang is still very much a part of the city.
I'm here for UNESCO duties, to be one of the resource speakers for Pamati: Let the River Rest, a cultural festival honoring the closure of the Puerto Princesa Underground River for three days, with film director Dante Nico Garcia as lead coordinator. [The Underground River is one of the UNESCO-designated natural heritage sites in the Philippines.]
When I arrived this morning, however, I was practically a zombie from lack of sleep and the general tiredness of travel, that I purposely missed the morning session, and staggered to my assigned room, where I immediately took to bed and knocked out for five hours. Later in the day, I attended parts of the afternoon session, and tried my best to finish my presentation due tomorrow morning, but residual sleep also took over. I finally joined the screening of a documentary titled Fragile Frontier while having dinner with the rest of the participants. The film is about the impact of Typhoon Odette on Palawan, directed by Jessie Cereno and produced by the UNESCO National Commission for the Philippines [UNACOM]. [It is narrated by Silliman author and cultural worker Jane Timbancaya-Urbanek.]
I will always find travel to be essential in my work in culture. When you are surrounded by like-minded people of other places who share your passion, and finding them doing their thing in surprising ways you never thought possible, it’s a charge that rejuvenates the often flagging spirit. I’m privileged to be able to do this, and now I’m here in Puerto Princesa. I needed this injection of inspiration after the relentless barrage of June.
Labels: art and culture, ccultural work, life, travel, UNACOM, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 13, 2026
7:00 PM |
Let's Get Lit!
It’s the weekend, and I can honestly say the past week has been one of the busiest weeks I’ve had since the year started! A ton of academic work [with a looming graduation ceremony bearing down our necks.] And a lot of literary campaigns for the Dumaguete UNESCO City of Literature, particularly, and especially for the upcoming Dumaguete Literary Festival this April.
Today, March 13, we had a school caravan at NORSU, but last Tuesday, March 10, we did the same for Silliman University where I gave a talk educating Sillimanians about what it means for Dumaguete to be a UNESCO Creative City of Literature. Alana Narciso helped out by sketching the influence of Edilberto and Edith Tiempo on Philippine literature, and Kaycee Melon was part of a panel on AI and writing. Patch Puengan is the firebrand behind the Let’s Get Lit campaign. Medyo kapoy baya, pero padayon!
[Photos from The Weekly Sillimanian, slightly modified by me]
Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumalitfest, literature, philippine literature, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, December 06, 2025
7:00 PM |
Reading to Children
To get back on track, I accepted this invitation from Virginia Stack and her Valencia Book Mobile brigade to read my picture book The Great Little Hunter, to a bunch of youngsters, aged 7-10, in Bong-ao, Valencia last Saturday. I had the time of my life! The children were initially shy but they were also curious and interested, and I really do think this is the best age range to get kids to start and love reading, the way I was when I was their age and encountered Henny Penny. This is the thing about Dumaguete becoming a UNESCO City of Literature: it is curious to have this designation now in an age when literacy among children is falling away fast. How can we have a City of Literature when nobody reads anymore? That's a question we are grappling with, and this literacy program is part of our solution. Thank you Tata and your Indefatigable team of teachers and volunteers for making this commitment work!
Here's a video of me reading:
Labels: children, children's books, city of literature, dumaguete, life, literacy, negros, reading, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, November 09, 2025
9:00 AM |
The Dream of City of Literature, Fulfilled
I still remember that fraught week in August 2024 when I had to churn out the preliminary bid for Dumaguete City as UNESCO Creative City of Literature—about six pages of questions that needed thorough answers, which resulted to almost 30 pages of the final bid.
I was actually set to enjoy Founders Day in Silliman University when then DTI Negros Oriental Director Nimfa Virtucio and then DTI Creative Sector Specialist Anton Gabila invited me and Renz for “a cup of coffee” in Adorno Galeria y Cafe. Abi nako coffee lang, but it turned out they were keen on submitting Dumaguete for the distinction and was roping me in to help them. Of course I said yes. I had already articulated too many times before how much I dreamed of Dumaguete getting this distinction—and they knew.
The catch was, I only had about one week to put together the pre-bid, because the deadline was on August 31! Oh, the pain! But that fraught week also made me realize, when I was formulating the responses in the portfolio, that Dumaguete actually could do this, that we really had everything [except, ehem, publishing houses and translation projects]. The closest example I could get to comparing Dumaguete with was Iowa City, also a small city—but its literary heart was big.
We were able to submit the pre-bid to UNACOM on time, on March 3. And then I forgot all about it.
Until UNACOM, the Philippine Commission for UNESCO, contacted us sometime in November 2024 to happily inform us that we were on their final list of recommendees to UNESCO, alongside Quezon City for Film.
That galvanized us to do the final bid, from December 2024 to March 2025, again fretting over the final questionnaire and other things to do. Together with then Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, we formed a think tank of about 20 people, to make the bid truly community- and sector-driven.
There were sacrifices to be made in the pursuit. I let go of finishing several of my books actually slated for publication in 2025 just to be able finish the bid. Then there was the toll on the body and mental health. The sleepless nights were abominable. The anxiety was formidable, and I actually went back to taking Ritalin after being off-meds for two years.
We submitted the bid on time, but we never were able to do the planned video documentary to supplement it. There was just no time. Days and months later, the thought that plagued me was that I could have done more, especially for our website, which was at best nice-looking but quite rudimentary in terms of laying out what literature was all about in Dumaguete. There was just no time. In the end, I just hoped the bid itself would suffice for UNESCO. Truth to tell, I was prepared to receive bad news. I dreaded the coming of October 31. Please forgive me if I cried Friday night when I received the news. It was my body heaving a sigh of relief.
I was in a Halloween party being hosted by Renz Torres last night, but October 31 being World Cities Day – which meant UNESCO was going to announce the new cohorts of its Creative Cities Network – was always lurking in my consciousness. This was the exact second, captured perfectly by the quick phone camera of Tita Melisa Maghanoy, when I read the message from Anton Gabila, one of my co-conspirators in the bid for UNESCO City of Literature for Dumaguete City ... And then I burst into tears, with Renz comforting and congratulating me and the team behind this endeavor. [Photos by Melisa Towers]
Because what does one do with joy that comes after such a long and uncertain wait? When the news broke that Dumaguete had finally been named a UNESCO Creative City of Literature, I was gobsmacked. I read UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay’s words describing the new designated cities: “UNESCO Creative Cities demonstrate that culture and creative industries can be concrete drivers of development. By welcoming 58 new cities, we are strengthening a Network where creativity supports local initiatives, attracts investment and promotes social cohesion.” I couldn’t believe that our small city—with a big literary heart—was among these.
I felt the exhaustion of a year’s worth of labor turn into something like grace.
I thought of the many nights trying to map out what made our city’s literary soul unique, and map out what else we could do to make it a vibrant creative sector. I thought of the countless writers who had, across decades, quietly built the foundation that made the bid even possible—from the Silliman Universityi National Writers Workshop that Edilberto and Edith Tiempo began in 1962, to the new voices emerging from the Buglas Writers Guild, to the poets scribbling verses on napkins in our ubiquitous cafés.
I remember the labor, but Dumaguete becoming a UNESCO City of Literature was never about me or even about a single institution. It was about articulating, finally, the long story of a city that has always written itself into being. Dumaguete is a city that breathes literature. This recognition from UNESCO simply affirms what we have long known in our bones: that our words matter, that our stories shape us, that the act of writing here is both heritage and hope.
I do need to remind everyone that the designation—which comes up for review every four years—is not a medal to polish and display, or a “forever title.” Like how I’ve said it before, it is a promise, perhaps even a burden—to make sure that this literary city remains worthy of the name. To be a City of Literature means committing ourselves to nurturing new voices, to making sure that the next generation of writers from Dumaguete will have more platforms, more spaces, more readers, and more courage. It means making literature not just an elite preoccupation but a living conversation with the community—with the tricycle driver who recites tercets, the fisherwoman who tells her grandchildren stories by the shore, or the student learning to find her voice in the classroom.
I echo what Dauin writer Michael Aaron Gomez said about the responsibility of getting this distinction: “To me, it clarifies the purpose of writers in the city: one must be able to look clearly at the successes and failures of Dumaguete and the conditions shaping itself and, more importantly, its people in the modern century. Because ultimately the reader is what it comes down to. I hope the title clarifies instead of obscures what a Dumaguete writer must do in the face of the rushing waves of what we call progress and development.”
It means that Dumaguete’s literary map must expand beyond its old boundaries. We need to champion our writers in Binisaya, not just those who write in English—and even in all the in-between languages that reflect who we are. We must find ways to publish locally, to translate, to reach readers beyond our islands. The irony of a City of Literature without a strong publishing ecosystem [which Dumaguete alas suffers from] must be addressed, and this designation gives us the mandate to do so. The hope is that soon, we will have more independent presses, more bookstores, even more literary residencies, and that Dumaguete will once again become what it was in the golden decades: a true haven for writers.
When I think of what lies ahead, I recall how the bid itself was written—by many hands, each adding a sentence to a shared story. For our technical working group, we got creatives, teachers, students, government workers, cultural workers, publishers, and bookstore owners who came together to define what “literary” means in a place like Dumaguete. The process was itself an act of literature: collaborative, imaginative, and deeply rooted in place. It showed me then that literature is not confined to the printed page. It can also be policy, advocacy, and vision—the very work of imagining better futures for our city.
So yes, I cried. Because Dumaguete’s recognition as a UNESCO City of Literature is both culmination and beginning. It is the acknowledgment of decades of literary life, and the invitation to write its next chapters. We have joined a global network of cities that believe culture can transform communities— Edinburgh, Jakarta, Melbourne, Iowa City, Prague, Reykjavik, Wonju—and now, Dumaguete.
But what makes this achievement extraordinary is how intimate it feels. It’s not a distant honor bestowed from above; it’s a story that began with a simple “cup of coffee” in Adorno. From there, a city dared to dream on paper, and that dream became real. I think that’s the truest metaphor for writing: to wrestle with words until the world shifts a little closer to what you imagine.
Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, life, philippine literature, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, October 31, 2025
9:00 PM |
Wake Me Because I Must Be Dreaming! Dumaguete is Now UNESCO City of Literature!
We got it. My hands are shaking.
I still remember that fraught week in August 2024 when I had to churn out the preliminary bid for Dumaguete City as UNESCO City of Literature – about six pages of questions that needed thorough answers, which resulted to almost 40 pages of the final bid. I was actually set to enjoy Founders Day in Silliman University when then DTI Negros Oriental Director Nimfa Marcos Virtucio and Anton Gabila invited me and Renz for "a cup of coffee" in Adorno Galeria y Cafe. Akala ko coffee lang, turned out they were keen on submitting Dumaguete for the distinction and was roping me in to help them. Of course I said yes. But I only had about one week to put together the pre-bid, because the deadline was on August 31! Oh, the pain! But that week also made me realize: Dumaguete actually could do this, we had everything [except, ehem, publishing houses and translation projects]. We were able to submit the pre-bid to UNACOM on time.
And then I forgot all about it, until UNACOM contacted us sometime in November 2024 to inform us that we were on their final list of recommendees to UNESCO, alongside Quezon City for Film! That galvanized us to do the final bid from December 2024 to March 2025, again fretting over the final questionnaire and other things to do. Together with then Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, we formed a think tank of about 20 people, to make the bid truly community- and sector-driven. I sacrificed finishing several of my books slated for publication this year just to finish this bid. The sleepless nights were abominable. The anxiety was formidable, I went back to taking Ritalin after being off-meds for two years. We submitted before the midnight of March 1, the deadline. [We never were able to do the planned video documentary to supplement our bid. There was just no time.]
I always thought I could have done more, especially for our website – so I was just hoping the bid itself would suffice for the judges. But, truth to tell, I was prepared to receive bad news. I dreaded the coming of October 31. Please forgive me if I cried Friday night. It was my body heaving a sigh of relief.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, life, philippine literature, silliman, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, October 03, 2025
9:00 PM |
Dumaguete is Now UNESCO City of Literature!
We got it. My hands are shaking.
I still remember that fraught week in August 2024 when I had to churn out the preliminary bid for Dumaguete City as UNESCO City of Literature – about six pages of questions that needed thorough answers, which resulted to almost 40 pages of the final bid. I was actually set to enjoy Founders Day in Silliman University when then DTI Negros Oriental Director Nimfa Marcos Virtucio and Anton Gabila invited me and Renz for "a cup of coffee" in Adorno Galeria y Cafe. Akala ko coffee lang, turned out they were keen on submitting Dumaguete for the distinction and was roping me in to help them. Of course I said yes. But I only had about one week to put together the pre-bid, because the deadline was on August 31! Oh, the pain! But that week also made me realize: Dumaguete actually could do this, we had everything [except, ehem, publishing houses and translation projects]. We were able to submit the pre-bid to UNACOM on time.
And then I forgot all about it, until UNACOM contacted us sometime in November 2024 to inform us that we were on their final list of recommendees to UNESCO, alongside Quezon City for Film! That galvanized us to do the final bid from December 2024 to March 2025, again fretting over the final questionnaire and other things to do.
Together with then Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, we formed a think tank of about 20 people, to make the bid truly community- and sector-driven. I sacrificed finishing several of my books slated for publication this year just to finish this bid. The sleepless nights were abominable. The anxiety was formidable, I went back to taking Ritalin after being off-meds for two years. We submitted before the midnight of March 1, the deadline. [We never were able to do the planned video documentary to supplement our bid. There was just no time.] I always thought I could have done more, especially for our website – so I was just hoping the bid itself would suffice for the judges.
But, truth to tell, I was prepared to receive bad news. I dreaded the coming of October 31. Please forgive me if I cried Friday night. It was my body heaving a sigh of relief.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, life, philippine literature, silliman, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 16, 2025
9:00 AM |
A Personal Journey to City of Literature
A pipe dream is comfortable. Indulging in pipe dreams is safe, because there are really no risks involved, only pronouncements.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to write a novel”—and some sort of satisfaction gets sated in the recesses of your ambitions, the pronouncement given, and that’s it. But there is no novel.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to travel around Europe”—and it will feel as if with these words you’ve done a little bit of “getting up” from your life as armchair traveler. But there is really no travel done.
You can also look at someone else’s painting in a gallery, and say, “I can do better than that.” But you didn’t. There will be no paintings done by you. But the pronouncement is there, hanging in the air—and somehow that is enough.
But it really isn’t.
The best fulfilment of dreams is in the tangible, not in their pronouncements and not in wishful thinking. And there lies the rub: because most of the pursuit of our dreams actually involve risking it all—carving time out of our busy lives to fill out a fragile schedule of creation, despite the demands on our lives from other things we have also made commitments to—like work, like family, like friends; committing to accomplish the dirty work of untangling seemingly insurmountable paper work or bureaucracy, generally sweating out the small stuff; and developing fortitude of spirit, because you will meet constant disappointments, as well as the firewall of unhelpful individuals who do not understand what you want to accomplish. The road to dreams fulfilled is never smooth, never easy.
Pipe dreams, on the other hand, are easy.
One pipe dream I had indulged on for so long was Dumaguete City becoming UNESCO Creative City of Literature. As a writer born and raised in Dumaguete, I know—perhaps in the most personal sense—how this city has carved a place for itself as an unlikely capital of the literary arts in the Philippines, helped for the most part by writers from Silliman University, like the Tiempos, who chose to stay in Dumaguete [despite the tangible promises of more fulfilled careers outside of it] and have made it the home for which they could steward, not just their own literary creations, but also foundational institutions that would turn out to be great contributions to the national literature.
In 2010, I was one of two Philippine delegates [the other one being the SEAWrite awardee and novelist Edgar Calabia Samar] chosen as honorary fellows to the International Writing Program [IWP] in Iowa City, which just became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008. When I was in Iowa for this very prestigious fellowship—for me perhaps the most fitting “reward” an international writer can have in their writing life—it dawned on me that this distinction was also fitting for Dumaguete. Iowa City is small, like Dumaguete. It only has one major bookstore; same as Dumaguete. It regularly hosts international writers and literary conferences; same as Dumaguete. And it has the same vibes as Dumaguete—replace Iowa’s corn fields with the sea, and you will get Dumaguete, with blonde people. In fact, Dumaguete writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, who is a resident of Iowa City, calls that Midwestern city as her “blonde Dumaguete.”
Iowa City is also a place whose writing culture is driven by the University of Iowa, the biggest university in town—essentially its own Silliman University. [The writer Robin Hemley, who ran the creative nonfiction program at the University of Iowa for many years, is actually married to a Filipina—from Siquijor.] The famous Iowa Writers Workshop—the grandfather of all writing workshops in America—was the model for the Silliman University National Writers Workshop [SUNWW]; in fact, both Edilberto Tiempo and Edith Tiempo were products of the Iowa Writers Workshop—graduating in the 1950s—Edilberto for fiction and Edith for poetry. And when Paul Engle, the longtime director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, visited Dumaguete in the 1960s to be part of the SUNWW, the idea of establishing the International Writing Program came to him—and he, in fact, invited some of the early alumni of SUNWW to be part of the early batches of the IWP’s famous fall residency. All these literary crosscurrents were already in place when I went to Iowa in 2010 to be part of that fall residency—which is probably why I felt so much at home there.
Since I came back from the U.S., I’d been advocating for the idea of Dumaguete as UNESCO City of Literature every chance I got, including at several editions of the 6200 PopUp, sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry [DTI]—Negros Oriental, as well as in all my lectures about Dumaguete literature in various seminars and fora, including one on the creative economy at Silliman University, sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. In 2014, in my capacity as the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center, I even curated an exhibit at Silliman Library titled Cities of Literature, which traced the link between Dumaguete and Iowa [already mentioned previously], with the blessings of the IWP’s Christopher Merrill.
In 2018, prodded by former Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio, I prepared a white paper for Mayor Ipe Remollo to determine whether we should apply for City of Music or City of Literature. [You see, only the LGU can apply for UNESCO Creative City.] Naturally, as a writer, my bias was clear. The pandemic put these plans on hold.
But when I gave a talk about this very same thing at the first edition of Dumaguete LitFest in April 2024, that propelled DTI Negros Oriental to take the first steps and got me involved in the official application to UNESCO, with the blessings of Mayor Remollo. That’s the story.
We submitted our application on the deadline: March 3.
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to March, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I actually found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed.
Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.]
In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. There’s also the indefatigable efforts of City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, who provided the grease to get the LGU involved in the entire process.
Again, I will take the road of gratefulness.
Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You have been my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the magic of trying instead of wishful thinking and pipe dreams; this is our attempt to make things tangible. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.
Presenting the Dumaguete's bid for UNESCO City of Literature to Dumaguete Mayor Ipe Remollo, with [from left] Anton Gabila of DTI, Ian Rosales Casocot of Buglas Writers Guild, and Katherine Aguilar of the Dumaguete City Tourism Office.
Labels: art and culture, city of literature, dumaguete, philippine literature, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, March 03, 2025
8:55 PM |
Nahuman Ra Jud
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to now, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed. Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.] In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. Again, I will take the road of gratefulness. Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You are my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the primacy of trying instead of wishful thinking; this is our attempt. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, life, literature, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, June 06, 2014
10:58 PM |
Cities of Literature
Each one of us has a crazy dream. To climb Mount Everest, for example, or to write a complicated symphony. Or to bake the world’s largest pizza, if that’s more your thing. In my quiet moments, when I ponder about the things I have written—or plan to write—I think about how wonderful it would be to write a good YA novel, in the vein of
The Perks of Being a Wallflower or
The Fault in Our Stars, but with a Filipino context and sensibility, something I have yet to really see from a Philippine author.
I have been writing for most of my life, and so it is not exactly out of left field for me to dream of big things that are literary. What is a little bit audacious, however, is an even bigger dream: to make Dumaguete a UNESCO City of Literature. This is part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, which it launched in 2004, to answer what it perceived to be a need to foster appreciation for cultural diversity around the world. The aim is to “promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both the developed and the developing world,” through literature, music, film, media, gastronomy, crafts and folk art, and design.
To be approved as a City of Literature, cities must satisfy a number of criteria that mark its affinity to the written word, where literature must be seen to play an important role in city life: this includes the quality, quantity, and diversity of publishing in the city; the quality and quantity of educational programs focusing on domestic or foreign literature in schools at all levels; the hosting literary events and festivals which promote domestic and foreign literature; the existence of libraries, bookstores, and public or private cultural centers which preserve, promote, and disseminate domestic and foreign literature; the involvement by the publishing sector in translating literary works from diverse national languages and foreign literature; and an active involvement of traditional and new media in promoting literature and strengthening the market for literary products. A tall order—but the benefits of being accorded the honor are huge.
To date, there are only seven Cities of Literature, which include Edinburgh, Scotland (2004), Melbourne, Australia (2008), Dublin, Ireland (2010), Reykjavík, Iceland (2011), Norwich, England (2012), and Kraków, Poland (2013).
In November 2008, Iowa City in Iowa, U.S.A. became the third city in the world to be declared by the UNESCO as an official City of Literature. Its Creative Cities Network program cites that “[s]ince 1955, graduates and faculty of the University of Iowa have won more than 25 Pulitzer Prizes in literature. Iowa City has been home to such acclaimed authors as Flannery O’Connor, Wallace Stegner, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And the world-famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop was the world’s first Master of Fine Arts degree program in creative writing...”
I am specific about my mention of Iowa City as a City of Literature, because halfway around the world, in the heart of the Visayas, Dumaguete is very much Iowa City’s literary twin. Its inclusion in the ranks of these literary cities could prove to be a portal with which we can lay claim to the same distinction.
The writer Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, a native of Dumaguete and a current resident of Iowa City once called the latter her “blonde Dumaguete.” Indeed, both share between them a wealth of literary developments that have lasted more than sixty years. “In 1946,” she once wrote, “my father [Edilberto K. Tiempo] was offered a scholarship by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, enabling him to do graduate work in the United States, at Stanford. He was readying himself for the scholarly regimen of the classics, and doing a refresher course in Latin, among his preparations, when my father was asked what area he wanted to specialize in at Stanford. ‘Creative writing,’ he said. ‘There are a number of novels I am going to write, and I need to know if I’m writing them effectively and well.’
“’Oh,’ the Presbyterian Board officer told him, ‘then there’s only one place for you to go. Iowa.’ Dad had to look up Iowa in the encyclopedia, and he was a bit puzzled at what he read. ‘Isn’t that where...they grow corn?’”
Iowa, right smack in the cornfields and silos of the American Midwest, indeed grew corn. But Dr. E.K. Tiempo was soon to learn there was a man there. It was a poet named Paul Engle, and he ran what was and still is considered the best creative writing workshop in the world: the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. “And that is how my Dad,” Rowena Torrevillas continued, “took a freighter across the Pacific, then a train halfway across the continent from San Francisco to Iowa City. And one morning, carrying his belongings in an Army-issue duffel bag, he crossed the Pentacrest on the campus to find the postwar temporary quarters in the Nissen huts, the quonset building where Paul Engle was holding the Writers’ Workshop.”
By 1947, Dr. E.K. Tiempo’s wife, Edith Lopez Tiempo, also joined to take part in the writing program in Iowa. When the Tiempos returned to the Philippines in 1951, Silliman University was already abuzz with creative writing. The campus was sprouting literary enthusiasts, among them Aida Rivera-Ford, Rodrigo and Dolores Feria, and Ricaredo Demetillo. The Tiempos made creative writing an area of concentration for English majors in the English Department—and soon that paved the way to preparations in 1961 to hold a workshop similar to the one they attended in Iowa. The following year, it became fully operational, and now it is known as the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
In 1962, Engle himself visited Dumaguete, and met at the Silliman workshop two Asian writers, Ko Won and Wilfrido Nolledo. These two writers would soon form the nucleus of what was to be the Internatinal Writing Program, which Engle founded in 1967 with his wife, the Chinese writer Hualing Nieh Engle. Rowena Torrevillas, upon returning to Iowa City in the 1980s, would become part of the IWP staff, becoming its coordinator for many years, and editing with Paul Engle the 20th anniversary anthology of the IWP titled “The World Comes to Iowa.” By 2011, nineteen alumni and panelists of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, would go to Iowa as fellows of the IWP, including Wilfrido Nolledo in 1967, Cirilo Bautista in 1968, Erwin Castillo in 1969, Ninotchka Rosca in 1977, Alfred Yuson in 1978, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas in 1984, Edgardo Maranan in 1985, Fidelito Cortes in 1986, Marra PL. Lanot in 1986, Susan S. Lara in 1987, Rofel Brion in 1990, Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta in 1990, Gemino H. Abad in 1991, Marjorie Evasco in 2002, Charlson Ong in 2002, Sarge Lacuesta in 2007, Vicente Garcia Groyon in 2009, yours truly in 2010, and Joel Toledo in 2011.
In 2005, writing fellows from the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa, under Robin Hemley, also took part in the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, with Angela Balcita, Elizabeth Rae Cowan, Matthew Davis, Bernadette Esposito, Brian Goedde, Jynelle Gracia, Bonnie Rough, and Alex Sheshunoff. The program also sent visiting writers from Iowa to Dumaguete during the workshop’s 50th anniversary in 2011.
It has been a rich literary relationship between two cities. But does Dumaguete have what it takes to be City of Literature?
Do we have diversity of publishing in the city? Not exactly, but that can be done, if only we can get visionaries to see the value of a city that publishes books.
Do our educational programs focusing on domestic or foreign literature in schools at all levels? They do, but perhaps a sharper focus—with attendant assistance by those in the know—is in order.
Do we host literary events and festivals which promote domestic and foreign literature? By God, yes, and plenty of that.
Do we have libraries, bookstores, and public or private cultural centers which preserve, promote, and disseminate domestic and foreign literature? Our public library needs help, we can do more than just have National Bookstore in our midst, but we do have cultural centers that do a fine job of literary dissemination.
Does the local publishing sector help in translating literary works from diverse national languages and foreign literature? None of that, as yet.
Is there an active involvement of traditional and new media in promoting literature and strengthening the market for literary products? It can be done—but still a pipe dream.
It will take a while, but it can be done, if we really wanted to.
It will be an audacious undertaking necessitating a complete overhaul of how we think of this beloved city. But it can be done.
Labels: art and culture, city of literature, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, negros, philippine literature, silliman, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
GO TO OLDER POSTS
