This is my website – the repository of all my works and thoughts that I can share with the public. Since I am a bilingual writer, this website is in Filipino and English. Access to previous works such as my books, plays, and published essays and short stories will be available on this website.
This site contains my works as a playwright, short story writer, essayist, novelist, cultural worker, human rights activist, and researcher on nationalist tensions and ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia.
I was an international fellow of the Asian Cultural Council (Rockefeller Foundation, New York) for research on the theatre of the marginalized communities, stateless peoples, and the narratives of resistance on both mainland and archipelagic Southeast Asia in 2016 and a Chevening scholar for my postgraduate studies on Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict at the Department of Politics, Birkbeck, the University of London in 2018. I founded ATISA, a theatre company based in Manila and the Balangiga Press, an independent publishing house in the Philippines.
I am pursuing my MPhil/Phd English and Humanities at the School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London. I worked as a Project Manager for Kanlungan Filipino Consortium and co-chaired Status Now 4 All Network, a coalition of migrant organisations, community groups, and labour unions asking for regularisation of all undocumented migrants and those in the legal process living in the UK today. I also volunteer for Campaigns for Human Rights in the Philippines – UK.
I am currently exiled living, writing, and publishing in London, United Kingdom.
*The photo on this page was taken by Rio Otara at the London Centre for Books Arts in 2019. I delivered a presentation on independent publishing and writing in the Philippines and the Balangiga Press. The invitation was from the London-based artist collective Daikon.
Works
Fiction
My published stories, novels, and sketches will be showcased in this section. I am a bilingual author writing both in English and Filipino. Most of my works were originally published in Filipino and some are being currently translated to English.
Theatre
All my endeavors as a playwright. This will be the repository of all my works in theatre since I started writing for the stage in 2003.
Community Works
Beyond writing I also have activities for my communities. Currently we are doing some volunteer works for migration and human rights organizations in London.
Polemics
Op-ed columns in the past will published here for my own archive. Occasionally, I will write new essays, commentaries, and reviews.
Personal Blogs
My activities, thoughts, personal experiences that I can share to the reading public. Mostly reviews of the places I visited, restaurants that interest me, sketches of stories and bits of ideas that I can explore in a larger work.
Activism
We campaign for human rights in the Philippines, against neoliberal attacks on education and basic services, for migrants’ rights and welfare, against imperialism.