About the author: 
Ricky Lee is a monument in the Philippines; the magazine «Esquire», Philippine edition, has just elected him «Icon of the year 2023». He has written the screenplays for important and popular films (e.g. "Himala", "Moral", "Anak"), and he has helped shape the country's film culture through his work as a teacher for younger screenwriters. It was only at an advanced age that he began to publish novels. They contain the wit and pace of sit-coms, but also the amused reflection of these genres that impact back on life. For all his fame, Ricky Lee is a quiet author known for his immense kindness. The processing of his imprisonment as a student in the early years of the Marcos dictatorship permeates his work, as does his enjoyment of popular genres. The call not to forget permeates his writing as well as an unbelievable confidence in people: In his works, the descent into violence is never inevitable. Life could always be different, more beautiful and more cheerful.

About the Author
Charlson Ong has published three collections of short fiction: Men of the East and Other Stories which won the National Book Award; Woman of Amkaw and Other Stories which won the UP President’s Award; and Conversion and Other Fictions as well as two other novels: Banyaga, A Song of War which won the 2011 National Book Award; and Blue Angel, White Shadow which won the 2011 National Book Award. He teaches Creative Writing at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman.

About the book:
Publisher: University of the Philippines Press
Copyright 2000
ISBN 978971542202-4
436 pages
Original language: English
Rights available: translation and/or book publication; e-book and digital downloads

Second Prize, Philippine Centennial Literary Prize for English Novel (Centennial Literary Prize 1898-1998) given by the Philippine Centennial Commission  

Synopsis:
Seeking the truth about the past
On the Victorianas, a Pacific island west of the Philippines, the dictator, General Azurin, has just died. Elections have been called. Jeffrey Kennedy Tantivo, in self-exile in the Philippines, is summoned home by Jennifer Suarez Sy, daughter and heiress to the island nation’s richest tycoon. Jennifer is running for President and she wants Jeffrey to help run her campaign.
While Jeffrey was in exile, his father Carlos had died under mysterious circumstances. Jeffrey suspects his father’s aide, Echevaria, and he wants to find out the truth and reclaim his father’s fortune.
Jeffrey returns to a country very different from that he had left behind. His sister, Jasmine, is now a leader of the underground Liberation movement; his old friend Ignacio Manalo is adviser to Jennifer Sy; and Echevaria has become transformed into the charismatic preacher Brother Mike Verano. There are also the enigmatic feng shui master, Aldoux Chang, Jennifer’s “spiritual” adviser, and the mysterious Alfonso Ong, who is building a 21st-century city on an island off the Victorianas.
At first, Jeffrey believes his personal and political motives for returning to his birthplace are complementary. But as the novel unfolds, things become more complex and Jeffrey begins to realize the hidden truth about his past.

About the Editor:
Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz is the Palanca award-winning author of Women Loving (2010), the first sole-author collection of lesbian-themed stories in the Philippines, which is now available in an eBook entitled Women on Fire (2015). She is Associate Professor of creative writing at the University of the Philippines Mindanao. From 2011 to 2016, she served the writing community as president of the Davao Writers Guild, which organizes readings and writers workshops in Davao City, as well as publishes new writing from Mindanao in print and on the website dagmay.online. Concurrently, she served as regional coordinator for Eastern and Southern Mindanao in the National Committee on Literary Arts. Her poems, stories, and essays have been published extensively in the Philippines. She has presented her work in literary festivals and events in Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia. Her work appears in the “New Asia Now” issue of Griffith Review, the anthologies The Near and the Far: New Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region (2016), and Sanctuary: Short Fiction from Queer Asia (2019).
Cruz has received several Philippine writing fellowships and an international writing residency from the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange Program. She holds a PhD from RMIT University, Australia. Her memoir about starting over in Davao City, Abi Nako, Or So I Thought was published in 2020 by the University of the Philippines Press. 

About the Book:
Pages: 272 
ISBN: 9789712735974
Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Age: 18 and above
Publication year: 2021
Original language: English 
Rights available: Print, ebook, audio, subsidiary rights

Synopsis:
Most of the forty-nine works in the book were specifically solicited from the writers I know in response to the question, “What makes you tingle as a lesbian?” Literally, the sensation of “slight prickles, stings, or tremors,” the excitement. I purposely didn’t give any more qualifiers to that prompts. I wanted the writers themselves to define the terms and enact them on the page. And while the word “tingle” is a homonym for the Tagalog word for “clitoris,” many of the pieces submitted were not about sex at all. But all the pieces are about a spark of recognition, whether at the beginning, the middle, or the end, that one loves a woman as a woman. Tingle is the flint.
Here we are taking our stories of women loving women in our own hands and making ourselves visible on our own terms. When the initial thrill of desire is past, the tingle is ultimately the recognition that what we have found cannot remain in the dark—we must love and be loved in the light.
Award: Winner, 40th National Book Awards, Anthology

About the author:
Kannika Claudine Peña graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines Diliman. All the Lonely People is her first novel.

About the book:
Title: All the Lonely People 
Pages: 224
ISBN: 978-971-828-126-0
Publisher: Milflores Publishing 
Year of publication: 2023
Rights available: World rights
Persian language rights sold.

Synopsis:
In six interconnected stories of lost objects and the people who live in an unforgiving city who've lost them--and find them, we see the stories of--
1. Via, fresh from a breakup, she bumps into a kind stranger she meets in the worst night of her life; 
2. Waldo, a ten-year-old kid who needs help finding his lost keys, and his way home; 
3. Gemma, who reunites with her estranged mother to return her PWD ID, only to find her stricken with Alzeihmer's without any memory of who she is; 
4. Cindy who loses an engagement ring and hires a ring finder to help her find her ring--and with it, her hopes of getting back with her fiance; Dan who loses a cellphone, but after getting a new one, receives anonymous messages that he suspects (or wishes) are from his ex; and,
5. Finally, Marya, who is the keeper of the lost-and-found logbook of her workplace. She is the keeper of the stories and objects she is entrusted with. With these objects and the stories behind them, she begins to confront her own loss and, in the process, gains the courage to rebuild her life in the crowded Metro.

Comp title: Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

For further information please contact: 

About the Author:
Mabek Kawsek is a storyteller who grew up observing several kinds of culture: the Southern Chinese culture of her father, the Northern Chinese culture of her mother, and the Filipino culture outside her home.
She holds psychology and finance degrees from De La Salle University and a MFA in creative writing from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She published her first story collection Afraid To Be Chinese in 2006 and has contributed stories to several anthologies. Lately, she’s become interested in writing about Tsinoy women. They live in the heart of the city, help their husbands or fathers conduct their businesses, yet remain invisible in the collective imagination. Mabek reveals the stigma and dangers that they encounter through crime fiction stories. Good Dog is her first novel.

About the Book:
Pages: 240 
ISBN: 9789712735080
Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Age: 18 and above
Publication year: 2019
Original language: English 
Rights available: Print, ebook, audio, subsidiary rights

Synopsis: 
Every happy family has a terrible secret.
Agnes: Agnes Tan-Lim has it all: Victor, her devoted husband; Sophia, her loving daughter; and her thriving business. Then she receives a phone call from her daughter’s kidnapper. Now, Agnes must quell her panic and rush to get Sophia back. But Sophia’s kidnapping is just the beginning of a series of events that will cause Agnes’s seemingly perfect life to come crashing down, forcing her to face the truth that she has always refused to believe.
Marlene: Far from the rich Tsinoy suburbs of Agnes, Marlene Ong sits in her tiny apartment, badgered by supernatural visions—a chorus of ghosts, a skyway built on a secret, a specter calling out to her husband. She won’t leave Marlene alone until her body is found.
Two women whose lives get increasingly tangled realize that the mysteries they must solve are part of a more sinister plot.
Good Dog reveals a Tsinoy businesswoman trapped in tradition, made to confront an unexpected monster.

About the author:
Dr. Wilfredo Liangco is a medical oncologist who obtained his medical degree at the UP College of Medicine and trained in internal medicine and medical oncology at the Philippine General Hospital. This first book is a finalist for the 41st National Book Awards (to be awarded in 2024) and the Madrigal-Gonzalez first book award for 2023. He joined the Bienvenido N Santos Creative Writing Center and has participated in the 1st Creative Nonfiction Writing Workshop on Pathography: Writing the Pandemic.

About the book:
Title: Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer
Nonfiction
Pages: 300
ISBN: 978-971-828-121-5
Publisher: Milflores Publishing 
Year of publication: 2022 
Rights available: World rights
Arabic language rights sold.
Awards: 41st Philippine National Book Awards finalist, Creative Nonfiction in English and University of the Philippines Madrigal-Gonzalez First Book Awards
Original language: English

A blunt, hilarious--and heartbreaking--collection of essays, Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer, is a candid and hysterical account of the realities of life in and out of the Philippine General Hospital.  Based on his years of training as a medical intern and oncology fellow, the collection details sleepless nights, late stipends, and life-and-death decisions in the context of the imperfect Philippine healthcare system.
Comp title: Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt; Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

For further information please contact: 

About the author:
Cat S. is a self-taught artist who graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Her first book, "Little Wolf," is an Official Selection of the Philippine International Comics Festival and winner of the 2022 National Children's Book Award. Her second work, "Way Way Out There," was awarded The White Ravens 2023, one of the 200 recommended children's books around the world.

About the book:
Title: Way Way Out There
Number of Pages: 152
ISBN Number: 978-621-8244-28-3
Original Language: English
Publisher: Komiket Inc.
Reading age: 7+
Year of publication: 2022
Awards: The White Ravens 2023
All rights available, except Philippines.

About the author:
Cat S. is a self-taught artist who graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Her first book, "Little Wolf," is an Official Selection of the Philippine International Comics Festival and winner of the 2022 National Children's Book Award. Her second work, "Way Way Out There," was awarded The White Ravens 2023, one of the 200 recommended children's books around the world.

About the book:
Title: Little Wolf
Number of Pages: 140
ISBN Number: 978-621-95641-7-5
Original Language: English
Publisher: Komiket Inc.
Reading age: 7+
Year of publication: 2020
Awards: 2022 National Children's Book Awards
All rights available, except Philippines.

Little Wolf is not afraid of exploring outside her den. But during her first hunt with the pack, she makes a mistake on the field and gets lost. Little Wolf hopes to find her way home.

About the author:
Tori Tadiar started creating comics by joining the 2nd Comic Book Creator's Workshop, and her first work, "Sagala," won the Best Komiks in the 2016 Komiket Awards. She also won the Grand Prize for the 2020 Philippine Board on Books for Young People-Alcala Prize. Her second work, "Twinkle Twinkle," is an Official Selection of the Philippine International Comics Festival and won the 2022 Filipino Reader's Choice Award for Best Comics, and the 2022 National Children's Book Award. Tori's next work, "Ilustra," will be published by Disney Books. 

About the book:
Title: Twinkle Twinkle
Number of Pages: 128
ISBN Number: 978-621-9564-19-9
Original Language: English
Publisher: Komiket Inc.
Reading age: 9+
Year of publication: 2021
Awards: 2022 National Children's Book Awards, 2022 Filipino Reader's Choice Awards (Best Comics)
All rights available, except Philippines.

MANILA: THE GOLDEN AGE. Twins Alta and Signa work at the theaters until dawn day in and day out. It's a grind until the next Starfall, when they use their magical ability to see and catch falling stars, hoping to sell them to a mysterious patron. But when their sister Hanan becomes an up-and-coming singer catapulted to stardom, the twins discover that catching falling stars may cost more than what they bargained for.