On November 14, the Instituto Cervantes, the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas (UST), and Teatro de la Zarzuela, will present, for a second...

October is a month full of celebrations, including one that honors the four-cornered spaces where our history, stories, and identities find its right place. Observed every October under Presidential Proclamation...

On a payday morning somewhere in Bulacan, a mother walks into a sari-sari store clutching a handful of coins. She asks for a sachet of shampoo, P10-worth of cooking oil, and a packet of instant coffee… Behind her, a tricycle driver quietly adds another loaf of bread and canned sardines to his running tab, promising...

The country’s best writers and cultural institutions paid homage this year to the 100th anniversary of the late National Artist Nick Joaquin. Ironically, had Joaquin been around, he might never have allowed the tributes and accolades given in his honor. Or maybe, he would, but at great discomfort. Said writer Jose ‘Pete’ Lacaba, “Sinasabi sa amin ni Nick pag dumadalaw kami sa mga burol ‘ayaw ko ng mga tribute-tribute. Ibalot niyo na lang ako sa banig, itapon niyo ako sa Pasig River.’ Pero tinatanggap din naman niya pag binigyan siya ng award [Nick would tell us whenever we were in a wake, ‘I don’t like tributes. Just wrap me in a mat and throw me in the Pasig River. But he still would accept every time he is given an award].”

Europe, the seat of everything that was grand, powerful, and prosperous, was caught in the teeth of the First World War, the year Nicomedes Márquez Joaquín was born on May 4, 1917. It was half a world away from a boy who would emerge half a century later as one of the greatest literary minds in a poor and exploited country still caught in its own, long drawn-out war of independence in 1917.

“Our sense ... of our country is a sustained act of imagination. From that vantage, it can be said that our writers and artists, who are men and women of imagination, create our country (italics mine). That is to say: they evoke those images of ourselves as we live life day and night, those images of ourselves which we share and by which we recognize our nativity. We are our own best interpreters of our history and culture because it is we who have lived through that history and created our own values by which we live.” —National Artist for Literature Gemino Abad

It’s a four-year-old book of poetry—a slim book, all of 90 pages, with 55 poems published in 2022, ready to be read and absorbed. And for English-proficient third-millennium Filipinos—whether aspiring for comfort or already living in ease—the images spun by 16 of the 55 poems hark back to a time beyond their consciousness. That is why Jim Pascual Agustin’s Bloodred Dragonflies can be the metaphorical blood transfusion required to pump poignant, visual, and painful cells of old memory into the veins of the unconcerned and unaware.

VIA GRAPHIC PLUS | Manila, Philippines (November 5, 2026) — Good technology deserves care that goes beyond the purchase. Keeping it in good condition...

A common way to study biochemical systems is through computer simulations. Scientists specify the initial concentrations of molecules and assign values to reaction parameters...

VIA GRAPHIC PLUS | Manila, Philippines (November 5, 2026) — PUMA and JD Sports introduce the Bloom Pack, an exclusive collection of footwear, apparel,...

VIA GRAPHIC PLUS — Some runners come to chase a personal best. Others arrive with their families, friends or even their dogs. There are...

On “girl math,” lifestyle inflation, and why our 20s can make spending feel like a personality trait. There’s a very specific experience of being in...

A box of 1990s-era dishwashing paste and two empty spice jars were among the oddest of odds and ends—junk of the greatest variety—that her...