Victor Dennis Nierva, our cover photographer, says of himself, “I teach, act, direct, create graphic and digital artworks, design websites; I sing, crowd the broadcaster's booth on Sundays, write ocassionally for local papers, give failing grades. I am a self-confessed techgeek and a coffee and tea-addict. I cook a little.” Vic has published the bilingual (Bikol an English) poetry book Antisipasyon, which your editor helped translate, and works with Department of Media Studies, Ateneo de Naga University, in Naga City, Bikol.
Joel Toledo hosts the long-running Happy Mondays Poetry Night at Mag:Net Café & Gallery, which has just completed its 76th installment. A literature professor at Miriam College in Quezon City, Joel also holds a masters’ in creative writing from the University of the Philippines. His awards include the Palanca, Free Press, Meritage Press, and the Bridport Prize. His latest book of poems is The Long Lost Startle (UP Press, 2008).
Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com) is a multi-genre writer and marketing professional living in New York City. She is the author of an upcoming chapbook of poetry from Modern History Press titled Kaleidoscope: An Asian Journey of Colors. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals and anthologies across the US, UK, Canada, and India. She is a graduate of Columbia University in New York.
Mark Anthony Cayanan teaches writing and literature courses at the Ateneo de Manila University. He was a fellow for poetry in English at the UP National Writers' Workshop in 2007. His works have appeared in Ideya, and Sunday Inquirer Magazine, among others, and have won for him a Palanca Award in 2009 and an honorable mention for the Maningning Miclat Award in 2007. He is in charge of the literary section of Kritika Kultura, a refereed academic journal of ADMU.
Vijulet Jusi is from Batangas province, and currently works with IBM while studying at Law at the University of the Philippines. She graduated in UP with a degree in Psychology.
Rodrigo V. de la Peña Jr has been a fellow for poetry in various writers’ workshops in the Philippines. His poems and stories have been published in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Mud Luscious, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Philippines Free Press, and other journals and anthologies. He has received several awards, including First Prize in the 2008 Meritage Press Poetry Contest, Second Prize in the Embassy of Japan's First Pinoy Haiku Contest and Honorable Mention in the 2003 Maningning Miclat Poetry Awards. He is currently working in a marketing communications firm, where he has learned how to be a functional extrovert.
Ruth Mostrales writes us that should her poem “Strangers” get published by us it would be her first as a poet. She has published her essays in ANI, the literary journal of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and in the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles works for a book publishing company and has published his poetry widely. He is a fellow of LIRA (Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo), has attended the UP National Writers Workshop, and has published four books of poetry. He has won the Gawad Collantes, Gawad Komisyon sa Tula, Maningning Miclat Award for Poetry, and Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
Judith Balares Salamat teaches English and Literature at the Central Bicol University of Agriculture (CBSUA) in Pili, Camarines Sur. She has won various awards, including the Bikol Premio Tomas for Writer of the Year. Judith holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, major in Regional Literatures, minor in Cultural Anthropology, from the University of the Philippines. She writes a column for the Bikol Reporter and is the current treasurer of the regional literary organization, Kabulig-Bikol.
Dennis P. Sto. Domingo, a graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University, attended the first batch of the Rio Alma poetry clinic, LIRA, and became its first president. Going back to his native Davao, he became manager of the Mindanao operations of Tricom Dynamics, Inc., and only lately resumed writing poetry.
Jim Pascual Agustin spent his early years in a communal house, where he struggled to remember all the names of his numerous cousins. His family was forced out of their land to make way for the construction of a highway named after the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. With the help of an Irish Jesuit, Fr. James O'Brien, Jim was able to enter Ateneo de Manila University. He was a Fellow of the University of the Philippines Writers Workshop and the Iligan Writers Workshop. In October 1994, he moved to Cape Town, South Africa.
Joel Pablo Salud, a fiction writer, journalist, and occasional poet (as he describes himself), is an editor at Philippine Graphic magazine.
Alma Anonas-Carpio is, she writes us, "Journalist first, last and always. Married with children. Labandera, yaya, cook when there is a lull in work. Oh, yeah, I also write poetry. And play computer games. Sleep is for the weak."
J.V. Perez is a writer, artist, photographer, and graphic designer. He writes his fiction in Hiligaynon and has won the Palanca Awards and the Gawad Komisyon ng Wikang Pambansa. He is a member of the Sumakwelan Iloilo, a society of hiligaynon writers, the Photo Artists League of Iloilo, and he works with the editorial team of Yuhum Hiligaynon news magazine. He is currently employed as a computer programmer of the Iloilo Provincial Government. His other passion is table tennis.
Jun-Jun Sta. Ana, who generously lends PPB from his broad collection of digital and photographic images, is based in Chicago and has exhibited extensively in the US and the Philippines before he left. Among the latest are “New and Improved 2” at the LA Center for Digital Art, and “Viewpoint” at Center on Halsted, Chicago, Il.
Pablo Picasso has several “L’Absinthe” paintings, two of which we’ve seen at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The great painter was apparently another devotee of absinthe. The “Green Fairy,” (Artemisia absinthium), locally, artamisa, with its bohemian and romantic associations (favorite among Baudelaire and the culture of the poetes maudit) has exaggerated psychoactive properties. Banned by 1915, it has experienced a revival in the 199os in Europe (Wiki).
