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
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Sunday, April 13, 2025
9:00 AM |
Four Days of Stories, Four Days of Literary Fellowship—A Litany of Thanks
As of this writing, it has been eight days since we started the 2nd Dumaguete Literary Festival, and five days since we saw it come to a very satisfying end. We’ve had some rest, and we’re still basking from the plethora of thanks we’ve been getting from our guests and from our attendees. The most satifying one has to come from the novelist Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., who sent this missive post-festival: “Mabuhay at salamt! One of the best literary festivals I’ve been to (and I’ve been to a lot!) Simple lang, pero masaya!”
We were gunning for that, truth to tell—the simplicity of it all, but one with an ambitious programming—so that remark from Sir Butch felt like a validation. Ever since we attempted to mount the first one last 2024, we wanted to have a literary festival that celebrated books and writers, but also favored extensive discourse. And we also wanted to do it the Dumaguete way: chill lang. No mall to host us because that feels so capitalistic—so we invite you to a heritage house. No formal clothes kay init kaayo—so please come in shorts and tsinelas. And to take our guests around, we have the tricycle. [But vans are also available, of course.] I think it was that vibe that made the literary festival such a huge success.
From an organizer’s point of view, this was a lot of sweat and hard work and sleepless nights. [But no tears! Because the team behind this—Gayle Acar, Ernest Acar, Tara de Leon, Renz Torres, Kaycee Melon, and I, which we call The Circle—somehow worked at all these via our twice-monthly meetings over pizza and pasta and liempo and sushi and laughter at the Acars’—which was our constant headquarters. Our synergy was synergizing well!] The six of us represented Buglas Writers Guild, Libraria Books, Backpack Solutions, Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete, DumAlt.Press, and the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center of Silliman University, all of them the presenting organizations of the literary festival. But we also got tremendous help from the Belltower Project and Indievided. [Hello, Jan V. Barga! He was really the seventh member of The Circle].
Our gratitude to our partners, DTI Negros Oriental [especially Nimfa Virtucio and Anton Gabila], the Dumaguete City Tourism Office [especially Katherine Aguilar], Cebu Pacific Air [especially Michelle Eve De Guzman], UNWND Boutique Hotel Dumaguete [especially Marla De Asis Fresnido], CHADAA [especially Louise Remata Villanueva], and Buglas Isla Cafe [especially Carmen Teves-Lhuillier], all without whom this would have been impossible to organize. Our presenting partners also included Inspiro-Dumaguete [especially Suzanne Lu-Bascara], Florentina Homes [especially Gabby Del Prado], Pinspired Art Souvenirs [especially Jane Spiridinova], Talecraft [especially Ria Lu and Maita Lu], Asia Brewery [thank you for the Tanduay!], the Film Development Council of the Philippines, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts [the National Artist Office].
But without the writers who came, there would have been no literary festival. So thank you to the writers of Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor for coming and participating [as panelists, moderators, and presenters] and for making the Duma LitFest your home. And thank you to all our other literary guests from all over the Philippines [Manila, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Zamboanga City, Cebu City, Davao City, etc.] for accepting our invitation to be part of this festival, especially National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares, public historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, and novelist Jose Dalisay Jr. Even food writer Ige Ramos joined us and celebrated his birthday here! Thank you as well to our lone come-backing panelist Mina V. Esguerra, whose RomanceClass will always have a table at Duma LitFest.
We also ate beautifully this year, courtesy of Adamo [thank you, Edison Monte de Ramos Manuel!], Beans and Barrels [thank you, Pam and Ed Celesios!], The Dining Room [courtesy of Leon Gallery — thank you Jaime Ponce de Leon and Nadia Teves!], and the Dumaguete City LGU [thank you, Mayor Ipe Remollo!]. Busog kayo mi!
Thank you to our benefactors—regular Dumaguete people who believed in our vision and who chipped in—from Golda Benjamin to Gideon Caballes, from Jenny Lind Dales-Elmaco to Eugene and Niña Kho, from Arlene Delloso to Luis Sinco, from Pristine Raymond to Virginia Stack, from Zara Dy to Beryl Delicana, from Sally Maghanoy to Honeylet Tuanda. Daghan pa kayo. I am touched when friends unexpectedly pitch in to help in significant ways, just seeing how their contribution can actually make things better. On the eve of the LitFest, Marikit Armogenia saw our white monobloc chairs, and she was like, “That won’t do. Use the chairs from my catering.” Thank you, Kit! Then there was also another friend, Renaldo Norman, who saw our brownout problem last Sunday, and provided an extra generator for us. There are many others in the community who have pitched in like this, unbidden—and we are so grateful. This kind of generosity feels very Dumaguete.
Lastly, thank you to Cil Flores whose art beautifully captured the essence of our theme this year. What also made this year’s edition special was the painstaking effort made by Ernest Acar [of Just Guhit ], Kiko Miranda [of KikoMonster], and Elbert Or [of Pushpin] who listened to all the literary panels, and produced graphic recordings of everyone’s thoughts at the end of every panel. Truly amazing.
It truly took a community to present this undertaking, to make true the vision of Dumaguete as a City of Stories. Salamat sa tanan. Padayon sa 3rd Dumaguete Literary Festival on April 2026!
Labels: dumaguete, dumalitfest, literature, philippine literature
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Sunday, April 06, 2025
9:00 AM |
Realizing a Dream of Books and Writers
Like many things in my life, a literary festival set in the veritable literary cocoon that is Dumaguete was always a pipe dream—something you loudly wish you could make happen, but is always something elusive, and largely undone. I hate pipe dreams.
Dumaguete has always been a city of letters. Writers have long walked its streets like saints in a procession over many decades, their words carried by the sea breeze, mingling with the scent of tempurahan smoke and the occasional whiff of nostalgia. It is a place that cradles literature, a city where books and poetry and fiction feel as necessary as the salt in the air. And yet, for all its storied past—its heritage as the birthplace of great Filipino letters, its reputation as a refuge for writers in search of clarity—there has always been something missing. A literary festival, a true convergence of minds and voices, a space where writers and readers could gather, not just to commemorate history, but to create new legacies. This always felt like a dream, distant, unreal.
Last year, we made the first edition of the Dumaguete Literary Festival happen, but that one felt like a crazy dream. Did we really do it? And if we did, can we ever do it again? The new pipe dream is making this literary festival stick, and be sustainable.
But pipe dreams do not become real unless you have significant support from institutions, like the Department of Trade and Industry-Negros Oriental and the Dumaguete City Tourism Office, willing to have a stake in what you envision. Without them, we would not be able to do the things we do. And I’m glad we have added other institutions to the mix, like Cebu Pacific.
That is the truth of any grand endeavor. Vision is one thing, but execution demands resources, logistics, structure. And yet, in this city, sometimes bureaucracy or complacency is more labyrinth than lifeline. How does one convince a city office that literature is an economic asset; that a poetry reading can bring in just as much as a cultural show; that writers, too, are cultural ambassadors? The miracle, perhaps, is that sometimes you do not have to. Sometimes, someone on the other end of a desk understands, someone who loves words as much as you do, someone who has been waiting for a project like this to say yes to. And when that happens, the door inches open.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless you have friends who tell you they are there to help you realize them for real, like Ernest, like Gayle, like Tara, like Renz, like Kaycee.
No festival is built alone. And this, more than anything, is the soul of literature in Dumaguete: community. It is the quiet power of an offer, a “How can I help?” that turns an idea into a movement. It is Ernest Acar of Backpack Solutions managing logistics with the ease of a conductor leading an orchestra. It is Gayle Acar of Libraria Books drawing up schedules with military precision, and finding ways to bring in people that I often cannot. It is Tara de Leon of Dum.Alt.Press securing venues and volunteers and musicians with her signature dispassionate charm. It is Renz Torres, also of Dum.Alt.Press, tirelessly rallying various kinds of people to chip in and help [and also comforting me in my cycles of stress]. It is Kaycee Melon of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center finding ways to bring in new voices, finding out-of-the-box means to solve a quagmire. It is everyone saying, “We can do this,” even when it feels impossible. Because literature—the writing of it—may be a solo act, but the cultural work of literature has always been a communal one. One person writes, another reads, another is moved, and a chain begins. This festival is no different.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless they reflect a real need—and Dumaguete needs this literary festival.
For all its prestige, for all its literary history, the city has long needed a space for literary celebration. There is the annual Silliman University National Writers Workshop, the oldest creative writing workshop in Asia, but is it enough? We have long needed a space that is not just an academic exercise, or an homage to the past but a declaration of what is happening now. There are young writers here, voices sharpened by the waves crashing against Rizal Boulevard, by the drone of motorbikes on Hibbard Avenue, by heartbreaks unfolding in the nooks of Daddy Don’s or El Amigo. They need to know that their words matter. That there is an audience waiting. That they are part of something larger than themselves. And the older ones—those who have shaped this city’s literary landscape—need to see that the work continues, that the words they have planted are growing, thriving.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless you are willing to take the risk of failing.
Because what if no one shows up? What if the funding falls through? What if, despite everything, the dream collapses? These are the fears that accompany every grand idea. But fear is not an argument for inaction. Literature, after all, has always been about taking risks. Every poem is a risk. Every novel, every story, every essay—each one is an offering to an uncertain audience, an act of faith that someone will read, someone will care. And that is what this festival is, in the end. An act of faith. In the city, in the writers, in the people who believe in the power of words.
And so, the dream begins, again.
Labels: books, city of literature, dumaguete, dumalitfest, life, literature, writers
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Thursday, April 04, 2024
10:00 PM |
A Literary Feast in Dumaguete!
Celebrate National Literature Month with us with a series of events this April, culminating in the first ever Duma LitFest! The literary festival, slated on 26-28 APRIL 2024, will be a three-day event full of literary panels, readings, performances, and screenings. Everyone is welcome! Full schedule to be unveiled soon! Follow us on FB at
Dumaguete Literary Festival and on IG at @dumalitfest.
Labels: dumaguete, dumalitfest, philippine literature
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