Kajo Baldisimo’s artwork has been seen in the pages of Dark Horse Comics, a Star Wars comic book, as well as several magazines in the Philippines. While his day job keeps him drawing storyboards for Manila’s top TV commercial directors, the most exciting part of the day (or night) for Baldisimo is the time he can go back to drawing the next page of Trese.
Rosario Cruz-Lucero writes historical and crime fiction. The sugar haciendas on her home island of Negros are her trove of materials for her stories of murder and mayhem. Although she has lived in Manila all her adult life, “A Human Right” is only her second story set in this city. Her latest book, published this year, is La India, or Island of the Disappeared.
Jose Dalisay has published more than twenty-five books of fiction and nonfiction. A Fulbright, Hawthornden, British Council, David T.K. Wong, Rockefeller, and Civitella Ranieri fellow, he teaches English at the University of the Philippines, where he also serves as director of the Institute of Creative Writing. His second novel, Soledad’s Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007. He lives with his wife June in Diliman, Quezon City.
Lourd De Veyra published his first novel, Super Panalo Sounds! in 2011, along with his third collection of poems, Insectissimo!, following Subterranean Thought Parade and Shadowboxing in Headphones. He has won prizes from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Philippines Free Press, and he won the very first NCCA Writers’ Prize for poetry. He also fronts a spoken word jazz-rock band, Radioactive Sago Project. He currently works as news anchor for TV5.
Eric Gamalinda has published four novels, three books of poetry, and two collections of stories including People Are Strange, which was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2012. He teaches at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. Since 1994, he has lived in New York City.
Jessica Hagedorn was born in Manila and now lives in New York. A novelist, poet, and playwright, her published works include Toxicology, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, Danger and Beauty, and Dogeaters, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. She also edited both volumes of the groundbreaking anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. Visit her website at www.jessicahagedorn.net.
Angelo R. Lacuesta has received several awards for his short stories, including the Philippine Graphic/Fiction Award, the Palanca Memorial Award, and the N.V.M. Gonzalez Award. He has also been a literary editor of the Philippines Free Press. His short story collections have won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award and two Philippine National Book Awards. He is currently a private businessman and editor-at-large at Esquire Philippines.
R. Zamora Linmark is the author of Drive-By Vigils and two other poetry collections published by Hanging Loose Press, and two novels, Leche and Rolling the R’s, the latter of which he adapted for the stage in 2008. He currently lives in Honolulu and Manila, where he was born.
Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Philippines. She is the author of the novels Forgery, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and Slow Burn, and two story collections, the PEN/Faulkner Award — winning The Caprices and Tales of the New World. Her work is included in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2. She has received fellowships and awards from Harvard University, the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and others, and teaches at UMass Amherst.
Budjette Tan is a creative director by day, copywriter by night, comic book writer after midnight. He is the author of Trese, a series of urban fantasy graphic novels cocreated with Kajo Baldisimo. Trese won the Best Graphic Literature award at the 2009 and 2012 Philippine National Book Awards. Tan is also the editor of the graphic novels Skyworld, The Filipino Heroes League, Bathala: Apokalypsis, Erik Matti’s Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles, and coeditor of the YA magazine Kwentillion.
Lysley Tenorio is the author of the short story collection Monstress, and his stories have also appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and the Chicago Tribune. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he has received a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the NEA. He teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California, and lives in San Francisco.
Marianne Villanueva is a writer from the Philippines and the author of the short story collections Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language. Her work has appeared in the Threepenny Review, ZYZZYVA, the New Orleans Review, Sou’wester, Prism International, Phoebe, the Asian American Literary Review, J Journal, and many others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and returns yearly to her father’s home province, Negros Occidental.
Jonas Vitman divides his time between Manila and Berlin. This is his first published story.