History and Fiction Through the Gaps
The two-day workshop will consist of discussions around the place of history and/or its silences in writing post-colonial fiction. This will be followed by workshop critiques of works from the fellows. The event will end with a book launching of Gina Apostol’s newest novel, Insurrecto.
Biography:
Gina Apostol’s third book, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). Her newest novel, Insurrecto, is published by Soho Press.
Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Philippines.
Requirements:
Ten writing fellows will be selected on the basis of submitted works of fiction (short story, novel chapters) or creative non-fiction. The workshop is open to all UK residents of at least six months or more, of South East Asian origin, and writing in English. Submissions that are not originally written in English should have an English translation. Works need to be original and unpublished with a maximum count of two thousand words.
After the workshop, we did a double launch of both Gina and Bonnie’s new books. Gina Apostol’s third book, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Philippines. Her newest novel, Insurrecto, is published by Soho Press. The novel is about two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, who go on a road trip in Duterte’s Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women—artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters—all finding their way to their own truths and histories.
Reine Arcache Melvin, born and raised in Manila, is a Filipina-American writer and the author of “A Normal Life and Other Stories” (Ateneo de Manila University), which won the Philippines’ National Book Award for fiction and was translated into French and published as “Une vie normale” (Esprit des Peninsules, Paris). Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies in the United States, France and the Philippines. She has worked as a journalist, translator and editor for various publications, including more than 20 years with the International Herald Tribune in Paris. She co-edited literary reviews in New York and Paris and edited an anthology of contemporary Philippine poetry. She has an MFA in Writing and Literature from Warren Wilson College. Her new novel, The Betrayed (Ateneo Press, 2018) is set in a time of dictatorship and political upheaval. It tells the story of two sisters who love the same man. Their passion threatens to lead them to betray not only each other but all that their father stood for. Shy, idealistic Pilar initially resolves to carry on her father’s fight against the dictator, while her flamboyant older sister Lali reacts by marrying the enemy – Arturo, the dictator’s godson. Each tries to find their place in this violent world, but can they withstand the corruption of politics and the relentless pull of their own desires? What price must one pay for passion?
