Myrna Peña-Reyes, author of the poetry collections, Almost Home: Poems (University of the Philippines Press, 2003; re-issue, 2004), and The River Singing Stone (Anvil, 1994), taught literature and creative writing at her alma mater, Silliman University, and sits at the panel of its famous workshop. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon where she met her husband, poet William “Bill” T. Sweet. She taught college in Eugene for several years, operated a bookshop, and wrote her poetry, before coming home with Bill to Dumaguete for good. A native of Cagayan de Oro City, Myrna and her family moved to Dumaguete City after the Second World War. Her poems of the sparse and austere lines are almost monastic in their containment of life and pain, in what Marjorie Evasco describes as the “perfect tone and pitch [which] always gives me the shiver of truth.” Myrna is one of our finest poets in English.
Victor Peñaranda recently moved, with his wife Jo, to the lakeside town of Bai, Laguna, south Manila. Husband and wife are currently collaborating on a book on Jose Rizal, while Bimboy (as he is known to friends) is awaiting the printing of his second book of poems. After long assignments in Bhutan and Macedonia for development work, they are back in the Philippines and Bimboy is once again traveling his beloved home archipelago. A man of many interests, Bimboy has edited the defunct broadsheet-format New Age and literary magazine called Ermita, with friend, Alfred A. Yuson. He has won the Palancas and the Philippines Free Press Awards, and his first book, Voyage in Dry Season, was selected for the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award in 1996.
Robin Lim is scheduled to launch her new novel, published by Anvil, at the Manila International Book Fair in September 2009, where she is awaited by a growing number of friends in the Philippines. Also addressed as Ibu (grandmother), Robin is a Certified Professional Midwife, a respected author and a world-class poet, with a passion for delivering babies with modern methods while at the same time respecting ancient rituals and traditions. Her Yayasan Bumi Sehat (Health Mother Earth) Foundation has for years operated a birthing and mother-baby health clinic in Bali, Indonesia. In 2004 her organization responded to the Indian Ocean tsunami, which inundated the coastal regions of Aceh province in Indonesia. It was one of the worst natural disasters of all time. Ibu Robin traces the origin of her calling to a hilot (midwife) grandmother from Baguio City, in the Philippines, which city, she writes, is “the home of my heart, where I was most happy as a child.” She has received regional and global recognition for her work and remains committed to changing the world through the gentle birth of one baby at a time.
Raul (RG) Morales is an architect and entrepreneur, and the editor's neighbor at Makati South Hills in Parañaque City. Though a bit self-effacing, this designer of houses and former manager of a tire company is an ardent photography enthusiast who seems ripe for an exhibit.
