Literature

Irene Sarmiento, award-winning writer of children’s book Tabon Girl and young adult novel Stray Cats, is the first author from the Philippines to be invited to this year’s...

In the middle of that year when we were picking peas on the hillside, I noticed the school children playing with their teacher in the sun. It was my first time to see her, a young woman of about twenty-five, with brown hair and a white dress spotted with blue. The blue sky seemed to absorb the white color of her dress, but from where I stood she appeared all clothed with light blue. The blueness of the sea at the back of the schoolhouse also enhanced the blue dots of her dress. But my eyes were familiar with the bright colors on the hillside, the yellowing leaves of the peas, the sprouting green blades of the summer grass, the royal white crowns of the eidelweiss, the tall gray mountains in the distance, and the silent blue sea below the clear sky.

Here the seashore stores The footprints of strangers And stories about the oceans Like nobody knows until now where the first wave came from And open secrets of ancestors Like...

Tiklop-tuhod sa harap mo akong Hari ng Dalita,nagsusulit sa paa mo ng buhay ko sa paggawa,nagsusumbong sa bait mong, ang pawis ko’t aking luha,paanhin...