PAN Episode 6: “Panayam Pinay, Kasama ang Apat na Kababaihang Manunulat”

For its sixth episode, the UP Institute of Creative Writing’s PAN series returns with PAN, Episode 6: “Panayam Pinay, Kasama ang Apat na Kababaihang Manunulat.”

Four Filipina writers, four books. Hear from writers F.H. Batacan, Monica Macansantos, Angela Gabrielle Fabunan, and Jet Tagasa as they reflect on their own unique voices in the landscape of contemporary Philippine literature and delve into their works, which range from poetry and fiction to essays. The event will be moderated by Ms. Gabrielle Paras.
Join us on Wednesday, June 25, 10 AM� at Room 112-114, Palma Hall, UP Diliman. The episode will also be livestreamed on Facebook.

Meet the writers:
FH Batacan is a Filipino journalist and a writer of crime and mystery fiction. She worked in the Philippine intelligence community for nearly a decade and later switched careers to journalism. She has won two Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature—including the 1999 Grand Prize for the English Novel for her debut, Smaller and Smaller Circles, published in its original shorter form by the University of the Philippines Press in 2002. The novel was also awarded the 2002 Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award and the 2003 Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award.

In 2008, her speculative fiction story “Keeping Time” won first prize in the English category of the 2008 Free Press Literary Awards. And in 2013, her crime fiction story “Comforter of the Afflicted” was published in Manila Noir—part of the Noir series of books by Brooklyn-based Akashic Books. She was signed on by literary agents Books@Jacaranda LLP in 2011. In April 2024, she was awarded the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for Fiction in English by UMPIL.

Monica Macansantos is the author of the essay collection, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2025), and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals. She was recently a 2024-2025 Shearing Fellow with UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and is an incoming Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow with the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Review, The Hopkins Review, Bennington Review, Lit Hub, and River Styx, among others, and has been recognized with residencies at Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, Storyknife Writers Retreat, and Monson Arts. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, Michener Center for Writers, and a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington.

Angela Gabrielle Fabunan is the author of Young Enough to Play (University of the Philippines Press, 2022). She was born in the Philippines and raised in New York. She holds a BA in English and American Literature from Bowdoin College (Maine, USA) and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She has been a recipient of the Rutan Grant (Theater, 2010) as well as the Gibbons Fellowship (2011). She was a fellow of the Silliman University National Writers’ Workshop (Poetry, 2015) and was the recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards (Poetry, 2016), and the Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio Literary Award (Poetry, 2018). She has published in numerous publications in the Philippines and abroad. She was a Poetry Mentor for the Association of Writers and Poets (AWP) (2024) and is an editor at Palette Poetry. Her first poetry collection, now out-of-print, The Sea That Beckoned, was published by Platypus Press (UK, 2019). She teaches at the Department of English and Literature at Silliman University.

Jet Tagasa is a former OFW and broadcast media professional. She lived and worked in Hong Kong and Dubai for over two decades, from 1996 to 2018. In 2019, she settled back in Manila, alongside her husband and two cats . When she’s not weaving spine-chilling stories, Jet unleashes her creative energy as an Events Creative in Manila, Philippines. Her inaugural literary venture, The Secret Lives of OFWs, opens a new chapter in her storytelling journey.

Meet the moderator:
Gabrielle Avanzado Paras is a faculty member at the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, University of the Philippines Diliman. She earned her BA in Speech Communication from the same university and is currently pursuing her MA in Communication at the Ateneo de Manila University. Her research interests center on women’s studies, political communication, digital media, and rhetoric.

Source: Likhaan: University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing Facebook