Issue 9 Contributors

A graduate of Political Science from UP Diliman, Rodrigo V. Dela Peña Jr ('Igor'). has been a fellow for poetry in the UP, Iligan and Iyas Writing Workshops. His poems, stories and essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He is currently based in Dumaguete.

H. Francisco V. Peñones Jr (Frank V. Peñones) is one of Bikol’s respected literary icons. He has received writing and study grants from the University of the Philippines, Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Ford International. Author of two bilingual poetry collections Ragang Rinaranga (2005) and Cancion nin Tawong Lipod (upcoming) both published by Agnus Press in Naga City, he has won several times in the Saint Peter Baptist Catholic Mass Media Awards, 2005 Premio Tomas Arejola Para Sa Literaturang Bikol and the Sumagang Awards For Literature and Journalism. Currently, he is finishing his MFA at San Jose State University in California.

Santiago Bose, Santi to his many friends, was the Philippines foremost painter of various disciplines (often using various indigenous media and materials in his paintings) from the Seventies until he passed away sudddenly in Baguio in 2002. "He was brave, infinitely creative, intelligent, humorous, personable and passionate. His overwhelming personality was linked to his artwork and his life in art, which for most of us will be his main legacy. His personal energy and vision led to the founding of the Baguio Arts Festival which he presided over in a loose but focused way for most of its long and successful life. He put the hill town of Baguio on the arts map. Throughout his life he led other arts communities to new projects, in the Philippines, here in Australia, in North America and elsewhere." (by Allison Carroll at Artlink)

Lina Llaguno Ciani is the noted Filipina painter who since the1960s has been living partly in Italy, partly in Bikol, in a beach house in a little village facing the Albay Gulf. This house and many of her paintings were not spared by Typhoon Reming, whose devastation is the subject of her current exhibit in Galleria Duemila in Manila. Ciani is a graduate ot the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, and took advanced studies at the Accademia delle Belli Arti in Perugia, Italy. Her works have been exhibited in New York, Rome and various parts of Italy, Jakarta, and Manila.

Our constant contributor, Luisa A. Igloria lives in Virginia and teaches at the Old Dominion University. (Her more detailed biographical note is in Issue 8.)