The Dumaguete workshop turns golden

Fifty years. Over 600 writing fellows. One tradition: Three weeks in Dumaguete City, where young writers participate in discussions led by older writers on the relative merits and demerits of submitted works, as well the virtues of craft.

It used to be that the batch of aspiring writers that gained fellowships to the National Writers Workshop established in 1952 by Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo and Dr. Edith L. Tiempo would only sit around long tables and listen to the co-directors and guest panelists perorate and sometimes argue over each manuscript.

But everything evolves, times change, and gone are the days when a haughty senior writer would dismiss a piece of work, whether poetry or short fiction, and suggest that the fellow, boy or girl, instead “Go home and plant camote.”

A kinder, gentler disposition has generally taken over the workshop panelists, especially since a majority of these have become regulars in these rites of passage conducted each Maytime in the City of Gentle People.

These days, while the week’s set of panelists often starts out in evaluating a submission, the fellows themselves are asked to render their own comments on a batchmate’s work. Sometimes they even get to do this before the senior writers make their respective pitches.

The creative writing workshop was patterned after the one pioneered by the poet Paul Engle of the University of Iowa, way back in the Fifties. The Tiempos were privileged to have become part of that workshop, which is still going strong in UI, producing some of the best poets, fiction writers, and now creative non-fiction writers in the USA.         

Upon their return to Dumaguete and assuming teaching positions in Silliman University, the Tiempos established their own edition, which they acknowledged to have picked up in spirit and form from the mother workshop in Iowa City.

The first batch of workshop fellows who went to Dumaguete in the summer of 1962 were the following: J. Lorenzo Rivera, Jose Ferrari, Jose Lansang Jr., Luciano Tenedo, Petronilo Bn. Daroy, Socorro Federis-Tate, Vic Samonte, and Wilfrido D. Nolledo.

The following year had these fellows: Alberto Florentino, Amalia Perez, Bataan Faigao, Elena Reyes, Emmanuel Osorio, Erwin Castillo, Fernando Afable, Geronimo Sicam, Indalencio de Leon, Ireneo Gancuangco, Jesus Peralta, Ko Won, Leonidas Benesa, Linda Ty-Casper, Nicanor Tabligan, Raymond Llorca, Rogelio Sicat, and Valdemar Olaguer.

Nolledo and Castillo would go on to enjoy fellowships in Iowa, and author landmark novels. Daroy and Benesa would become two of our most notable art critics. Florentino, Faigao and Afable would migrate to the US, and there continue with their writing and related art, with the last-named joining a Zen monastery and becoming its Abbott. Rivera, Federis-Tate, Peralta, Ty-Casper, Llorca, Sicat and Olaguer would win Palanca prizes, and some of them go on to author important books.

Many other Filipino and foreign writers would gain from their participation in the workshop, even stay on in Dumaguete, and/or become panelists, in the footsteps of Nick Joaquin and Francisco Arcellana, among others that represented the pride of Philippine literature. 

For decades it was formally known as the Silliman University Summer Writers Workshop, until funding was somehow withdrawn by the otherwise venerable institution, so that alumni of the workshop took it upon themselves to establish a foundation that saw to its continuity for several years, until such time that CAP College and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) stepped in to provide much support. And eventually, SU under its enlightened president Ben Malayang retrofitted the original arrangement, albeit the NCCA still gives a generous grant for the unbroken conduct of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.

The links remain strong between Dumaguete and Iowa, with Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, “Dad” Ed’s and “Mom” Edith’s daughter — she of her own sterling qualities as a poet and writer — still teaching at UI, while now also serving as the Dumaguete workshop’s director for the second straight year. Only fitting, too, especially now that Mom Edith, National Artist for Literature, is in her 90s, and that the workshop she sustained upon Dad Ed’s demise in 1996 is celebrating its 50th anniversary this May.

Anent which, this announcement:

“Silliman University National Writers Workshop Director-in-Residence Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and Silliman University are pleased to announce that the following young writers have been accepted as fellows for the 50th SU National Writers Workshop scheduled on 2-20 May 2011:

“For Poetry: Charmaine Carreon (University of the Philippines-Diliman), Evangeline Gubat (UP-Diliman), Jeffrey Javier (UP-Mindanao), Allen Samsuya (UP-Mindanao), and Alyza Taguilaso (University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center, Inc.).

“For Fiction: Glenn Diaz (UP-Diliman), Christine Lao (UP, College of Law), Emmanuel Lava (Ateneo de Manila University), Andrea Macalino (AdMu), and Marius Monsanto (UP-Mindanao).

“For Creative Non-Fiction: Philline Donggay (De La Salle University), Rogelio Garcia, Jr. (Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan), Miguel Sulangi (AdMu), Elaine Tobias (UP-Diliman), and Maria Villaruel (De La Salle University).

“This year’s panel of critics is composed of Dumaguete-based writers Myrna Peña Reyes, Bobby Villasis and Cesar Ruiz Aquino, as well as guest panelists Susan Lara, DM Reyes, Dave Genotiva, Ricardo de Ungria, Gémino Abad, and Alfred ‘Krip’ Yuson. For this summer, internationally-acclaimed Singaporean writer from Singapore Management University, Kirpal Singh, will be sitting in with the panel.

“The workshop, which is the longest running Writers Workshop in Asia, is coordinated by the Silliman University Department of English and Literature.”

Let me add: That Eng. Dept. is headed by Evelyn Mascunana, who gets able support from her assistants Parts Partosa and Alana Leilani Narciso. And of course Myrna, Bobby, and Sawi or Dr. Aquino are the “homegrown” fixtures that help constitute a bedrock of tradition for the workshop.

Hmm, I note with some pride that at least three of this year’s “golden” fellows have been outstanding students of mine in Ateneo: Eva Gubat in my Poetry class some years back, Andrea Macalino in a Fiction class quite recently, and Miguel Sulangi who was in a Phil. Lit class and submitted such polished essays that I had to be told by our own Eng. Dept. that I couldn’t give him an A+ — that a flat A would do.

They will surely contribute much to their own workshop. I have always been of the opinion that while these young fellows do learn a thing or two from the much older writers — not the least important of which is how to handle any literature with graciousness besides grace — they learn more while among themselves, bonding for three weeks in such close quarters as to establish rapport and camaraderie and harmony, which might prevent them from turning into gadfly poseurs later in the literary life.

The craft will take care of itself, if one is serious and remains devoted to learning all about individual excellence. We will hope that the process will start right on their first night at the Writers Village in Camp Lookout, Valencia, a half-hour drive up the foothills of Mt. Talinis from the city.

We will also expect quite a turnout of balik-fellows for this golden summer. For those into Facebook, check out Silliman University National Writers Workshop, which was set up by Misael Ondong, whose latest word is that the social schedule for the grand reunion is still being fine-tuned. Oh, and I know that Danny Reyes is in charge of the gala program.

Dumaguete-based writer and exceptional literary website administrator Ian Rosales Casocot and poet Joel Toledo, the literary editor of Philippines Free Press magazine, are collaborating on a special literary section in the PFP that will be devoted to works by workshop alumni. Rowena also seeks to push through with plans for an anthology of representative works from each of the 50 batches.

Kirpal Singh from Singapore, as the notable Asian writer who will also help out in the panel (last year it was Xu Xi from Hong Kong), is no stranger to our country and many of our major writers who have crossed paths with him in the international literary circuit. He is a special friend, blessed like good friends are with the extra gift of laughter.

Robin Hemley, director of the Nonfiction Writing Program of the University of Iowa (also senior editor of The Iowa Review and editor of Defunctmag.com), is scheduled to bring in more than a score of UI students for a month, longer than when he first did it with a dozen in 2004, as workshop participants in Dumaguete. This time, as I understand it, they will be based more in Cebu City, with a sojourn in Bohol also in the works.

In coordination with Sarge Lacuesta, Robin is now rearranging their sked so that they can be in Dumaguete on the last few days of the final week, in time for the street dancing, fireworks, and bacchanalian revelry. Apart from those, Robin will also represent UI in accepting a tribute.

As Rowena has communicated to him (Cc this eavesdropper), “The 50th anniversary includes recognition to the various entities that have been part of the Philippine National Writers’ Workshop over the past half-century. The University of Iowa is the recipient of the institutional recognition, and I believe our university president Ben Malayang is intending to present you with the plaque. It would be perfect if you were there to receive it.”

Yes, it would be perfect if all of us who once shared in the continuing bounty that is the workshop now turned golden would be there to receive even more grace and graciousness from one another.