DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 23 May) – Three Mindanao-based writers have been accepted to the 63rd Silliman University National Writers Workshop, to be held at Silliman University from June 9 to 20.
The fellows are Davao City-based Alter P. Hofileña for poetry, as well as Cagayan de Oro’s Aimee Faunillan-Abella and Koronadal City’s Jennie P. Arado.
The 63rd SUNWW is the latest season of the prestigious creative writing workshop.
Hofileña’s fiction has appeared in Dagmay, the literary journal of the Davao Writers Guild.
[An earlier version of this article included The Philippine Graphic.]
According to his Facebook profile, Hofileña is originally from Tangub City in Misamis Occidental. He was once a special workshop mentee to the 58th Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
Abella writes poetry and essays that have been published in publications such as Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. She was also a fellow at the 31st Iligan National Writers Workshop in 2024.
In 2015, Abella presented a paper on historiography at the National University of Singapore and subsequently defended her thesis on historiographic metafiction at Xavier University, according to the Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan official website.
Arado’s children’s book, Dako nga Yahong sang Batchoy, won the 2021 Best Children’s Book at the Mindanao ASEAN Literary Festival Book Awards. She was a fellow for nonfiction at the 2016 UST National Writers Workshop.
Arado, formerly Lifestyle Editor and Acting Marketing Manager at SunStar Davao, opened Alitaptap Bookshop in Koronadal City to help foster the love of books in a city that was picked by the Department of Trade and Industry in its Creative Cities alongside Iligan, Bacolod, San Fernando, La Union, and Tagbilaran.
In May, Alitaptap announced plans to participate more in pop-up events and expand its online presence to reach a wider audience. To date, the bookshop has since helped found two small literary movements, the Masá Book Club and Timog Literary Circle.
All three have backgrounds in the academe, with Arado formerly a college instructor at the Notre Dame of Dadiangas University and lecturer at the Mapúa Malayan Colleges Mindanao.
Hofileña currently teaches at the Humanities Department of UP Mindanao, and Abella was a former graduate research fellow at NUS and former faculty member at XU-Ateneo de Cagayan. (Yas D. Ocampo/MindaNews)
