I’m very happy to report that in a couple of weeks, I’ll be flying to the US to take part in a big literary event in New York City, the 5th PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. I received an invitation to the festival from its director, Caro Llewelyn, last October — many thanks to a recommendation from Filipino-American writer Jessica Hagedorn, who’s based in New York and who’d read my two novels and apparently liked them. The WVF will bring 160 writers from 50 countries together — some of the big names on the program include Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Neil Gaiman, the young Vietnamese sensation Nam Le (the current David TK Wong Fellow and Dylan Thomas prizewinner), and Francine Prose, as well as performers Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.
I’m deeply honored to have been included in the headline event on April 29, a reading by several authors from all around the globe on the conference theme of “Evolution/Revolution.” I’ll be in the company of Muriel Barbery, Nicole Brossard, 32" Narcís Comadira, Edwidge Danticat, Péter Nádas, Sergio Ramírez, Salman Rushdie, and Raja Shehadeh. I don’t know most of them, but they surely have never heard of me, either, so it’ll be a great opportunity to tell them a bit about us. I’ve yet to choose what I’ll be reading. The event blurb says that “Writers will read in their original languages as the English text is projected on screens behind them. Don’t miss the best literary voices from East and West.” Rushdie, of course, will read in English, but I’m thinking that I’d like for the audience to experience the sound of Filipino, so I might just pick something out of one of my plays in Filipino and provide a translation, unless the organizers request me to read from Soledad’s Sister, which is what they presumably invited me for.
There’s more information on the World Voices Festival here: http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096.
It’s a good time for Philippine literature, the recession notwithstanding (I was briefly worried that America’s economic woes would scotch my trip to the WVF, since they’re sponsoring my travel and other expenses). Miguel “Chuck” Syjuco’s Man Asian Literary Prize winner Ilustrado is being published by a raft of prestigious publishers worldwide, including Farrar, Strauss & Giroux in the US, Penguin in Canada, Picador in the UK, and Random House in Australasia. Early last month, he gave a reading in London at the Asia House. (My own Soledad’s Sister has yet to find a publisher in English outside the Philippines, but I was glad to recently receive my author’s copies of the published Italian edition from Isbn Edizioni, translated by Clara Nubile.) Meanwhile, next month, from May 18 to 24, poet Marjorie Evasco will be representing us at the Sydney Writers Festival, where I had a blast last year paneling with Junot Diaz.
Call it shameless self-promotion, but we need this kind of exposure in the global literary market, which we’re not going to break into by sitting demurely on our fingers, waiting to be discovered. The best way to do that, I’ve often argued, is to write more novels in English, or to get our best novels in Filipino and our other languages translated into English. And then we need to get noticed by publishers and agents through such means as by joining and winning international competitions, participating in literary festivals and conferences, contributing to major literary journals and magazines, securing writing fellowships, and getting into university-based writing programs abroad. These, of course, are the traditional means of doing things, and I’m sure there are other, though largely untested, alternatives. If you self-publish, for example, the burden on you to promote your work will be even greater, since you’ll be working without a network or a system in place. Publishing first on the Internet and gaining a wide following might conceivably also be a new way to gain attention.
Speaking of attention, mine was drawn to a recent blogpost by a brave young man, Adam David, who advocates what he calls “literary patricide by way of the small independent press — killing your literary daddies and mommies.” It’s a very provocative essay, something that will not (and clearly wasn’t meant to) sit well with many writers my age. Here’s an excerpt from it (you can find the rest by Googling “xeroxography adam david”):
“We can’t expect Mainstream Publishers to change the present condition for us, because the present condition is a condition that benefits their bank accounts. The present condition is a condition that benefits their egos. Mainstream Publishers will publish anything as long as there is money to be earned in it, if it maintains patronage, quality of thought and writing distant second and third concerns.
“What we should be focusing on is creating and providing new venues for alternative attitudes in Reading and Writing, creating and providing new venues for ourselves and our ‘unmarketable’ material, for our ‘unrefereed’ efforts. What we should be focusing on is developing and cultivating an audience that will read and understand and actively seek our work. We should stop writing down to Mainstream Publishers’ standards of marketability and literariness and start writing up to raising the quality of available reading material, and the only way to do those things and remain untarnished — remain honest to ourselves and to our art — is to do the publishing ourselves.”
Them’s fighting words, but Adam has very specific and workable ideas in his piece about what younger, non-mainstream (or anti-mainstream) writers can do to promote their work. I may have a quibble or two with some of his statements, but I like this attitude. I sent him this note: “Right on, Adam — I’m one of these poopy popsies myself, but I’ve also said that there’s nothing sorrier than a 30-year-old who thinks and acts like a 60-year-old. Claim your own space, make your own mistakes, win your own battles. No one else is going to do it for you.”
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And I’d like to publicly thank some people at my favorite express courier service, Johnny Air Cargo, for going the extra mile to make sure that an important package I was expecting from my sister in Virginia via their office in New York got to me in time for a meeting where the contents of the package were eagerly awaited. JAC’s Jet Creus, Leiden Godinez, Edwin Sison, and two fellows I knew only as Rodel and Peter showed great poise and patience as I practically screeched in their ears to get my shipment on time. And I did get it — 20 minutes before a scheduled meeting of our happy group of fountain-pen fanciers. (Yes, that’s what “important” means to me — a precious bunch of vintage Parker Vacumatics from the 1930s and 1940s, one of them endowed with a super-flexible nib that got everyone delirious. Like they say, whatever floats your boat!)
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Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.