“Away with ‘padrinos’: Small DIY press fair champions indie artists, creators” | Jecko Sanjorjo

“The reality of cultural production in the Philippines is fraught with problems and the same age-old questions: What kinds of value does art provide in society and culture? Who gets to decide such value, and why? Who gets to create and access art? Who gets to have their works published or exhibited, and what rewards are there in making them—if there is even one?” 

More of  “Away with ‘padrinos’” in Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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Jecko finished BA Communication Arts at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

“The wedding I can’t attend” | Jessa Marie M. Barbosa

“I always thought it was a given—that I’d be a part of her wedding no matter what. I looked forward to the day I’d help plan her engagement, go with her to get her nails done, and watch her cry tears of happiness alongside family and friends. Those things did happen—just without me.” 

More of “The wedding I can’t attend” in PDI Youngblood.

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Jess, 28, is a health-care worker who writes for fun. She is an alumna of the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

“Coming home” | Carmel Eloise L. Fajardo

“walking along a familiar road 

while seeing a new and different world

your home calls you a stranger

homesick to what he knows and holds” 

More of “Coming home” in Philippines Graphic.

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Carmel graduated with a BA Communication Arts degree from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños.

“(Up)rooted” | Dana Jean L. Cabalza

“They say home is where the heart is. But when I think about home, I think about places I cannot go back to. Home is love and love is grief. People ask me where I’m from and I do not know which branch of my roots to say: Yes, I’m staying in Los Baños now. No, I grew up in San Pedro. Oh, but our family is from Tuguegarao.” 

More of “(Up)rooted” in PDI Youngblood.

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Dana is a writing major at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

“Ficture” | Gerard John Fortaleza

“The Brown Room is at the far end of the dimly-lit hallway. I can’t see anyone, but there is a different sound from each room I pass. I assume there are people manning machines or whatever they develop here. All I can hear are my footsteps as I approach the Brown Room I am not quite confident with this operation. My heart pounds heavier as I draw near the room. But, this is a risk worth taking. I want to see him. I badly want to. No matter which way. I just want to see him again.” 

More of “Ficture” in Philippines Graphic.

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GJ graduated from the BA Communication Arts program of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. 

“Orange” | Ida Palo

 “She’s buried under here! She always wanted to be by this big, old tree when she died,” Ani says with a subtle enthusiasm that Sarah noted. “Nanay likes to spend afternoons here like you, just sitting in silence with her thoughts. One day, she promised me that we’d finally get this land back to our ancestors. Did you know they used to plant all kinds of fruits here?” 

More of “Orange” in New Naratif.

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Ida Palo is a writer, media worker, and activist from Laguna, Philippines. She currently serves as Community Administrator for New Naratif and Regional Coordinator of College Editors' Guild of the Philippines - Southern Tagalog, the oldest and broadest alliance of tertiary campus publications in Asia-Pacific. As a writer, Ida brings trans revolutionary stories to life.

“My big, broken mansion” | Jana D. Gusilatar

“Like me, some people aren’t aware that hoarding is a real psychological problem; however, hoarding causes distress, limited quality of life, and exposure to danger for themselves and their loved ones. Additionally, people who live in a cluttered environment have an increased chance of depression, anxiety, low motivation, and low self-worth, symptoms I’ve seen within myself growing up.”

Please continue “My big, broken mansion” in PDI Youngblood.

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Jana is a writing major at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. When not writing essays about events in her life, she writes marketing copy for several businesses.

“Anak ka talaga ng Tatay mo” | Mary Joyce A. Bernal

“As a child, I was fascinated by the absence of the upper portion of his finger. I would ask him a lot of questions: How did the accident happen? What was the machine that chopped it off like? Can he fold it? Will a nail still grow? I can only remember the laugh that would escape his lips preceding the answers I have long forgotten. Other people have not been as fascinated as I was. There were some occasions when people would flinch at the sight of what remained of his right index finger, refusing to let their eyes land on it a second longer. When I demonstrated to a friend how my father’s right hand looked, he backed up in shock.”

Maaaring ituloy ang “Anak ka talaga ng Tatay mo” sa PDI Youngblood.

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Kaka-gradweyt lang ni MJ mula sa programang BA Communication Arts degree ng Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Los Baños. 

“No Juan chooses to be poor” | Darryl Thomas O. Gonzalez

“Perhaps a major reason for the trouble that I have shared is because I was born to a lower middle class family, and I never really had a taste of the affluent life. My parents are incredibly hardworking and responsible, but they could never land high-paying jobs because neither of them was able to finish college. My father only reached second-year college, while my mother could not complete even her elementary education. The primary reason was that education was expensive, and their lack of resources to continue held them back.”

Please continue “No Juan chooses to be poor” in PDI Youngblood.

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Darryl recently graduated with a BA Communication Arts degree from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He frequently contributes to POP! Jr.

“Oo” | Emmanuel Lopez

“Bakla ka ba? In one of our computer science classes, we learned about disassembling and assembling PCs and troubleshooting whenever there is an error in the system. The first thing you need to do is make sure that the power cord is detached. Then you can start disassembling the unit in hopes of finding what is wrong. Getting asked whether I am gay or not has always been my power cord. Almost immediately, I would shut down because back then, I never really had an answer despite getting asked the same question over and over again. I tried to cover myself up with armor, but reality would almost always seep through the cracks, and people would know where to attack. Like the broken CPUs in our computer laboratory, I tried to disassemble myself, looking for something wrong within because people told me so. I took apart fragments of my being only to lose pieces of identity in the process, even when I wasn’t even broken in the first place.”

Maaaring ituloy ang “Oo” sa PDI Youngblood.

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Kaka-gradweyt lang ni Emman mula sa programang BA Communication Arts degree ng Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Los Baños. 

“Poem #2: Numbers” and “Poem #3: Bloodpower” | Krista Fama

  “My blood, they said, was powering up an alarm clock.”

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Krista graduated from the BA Communication Arts program of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. More lines of her poetry in The Philippines Graphic.

“Doggie” | Ysabella Dominique Lonzame

 “I have always treated Doggie as if he was alive and has feelings like a real dog. I thought about how sad he must be feeling from being left behind. I was on the verge of tears when I felt my foot hit something soft. I peered below my seat and there Doggie was! In my drowsy state, I may have forgotten that I was clutching Doggie while I was sleeping; I probably dropped him as I went deeper into my dreams.”

Kindly continue “Doggie” in PDI Youngblood.

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Ysa is a graduating communication arts student from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She likes reading books and runs a bookstagram account (@bellamazingreads) where she occasionally writes reviews.

“All hail the romantic comedy!” | Regina Florene Tan

“I would never call myself a film buff. That title is reserved for the diehard Kurosawa fans, the Christopher Nolan slash David Fincher film bros, and my best friend Eiyah who apparently knows all up-and-coming Hollywood actors by name and birth year. I humbly refuse to align myself with them because while they were watching the decade’s list of Academy Award winners for Best Picture, I was probably arguing about seeing the next Adam Sandler feature in theaters with my dad.”

Consider reading “All hail the romantic comedy!” in Rappler.

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Reg is a graduating BA Communication Arts student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She spends the little time she has away from her academics watching films and writing short, often unserious, reviews on Letterboxd.

“In transit” | Jecko Sanjorjo

“There’s something awful about the physical movement of the in-transit-ness of commuting, too: It’s a stressful whiplash of a rush, like Morse code only with fuller and longer dashes, abruptly stopping here and there to pick up and drop off. You feel the passing of asphalt and cement beneath the roaring and vibrating mass of the vehicle’s floor.”

Kindly continue “In transit” in PDI Youngblood.

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Jecko is a senior communication arts student from the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

Sofia and Kim in Paragraph Planet

Beyond the sea

“To Abandon” by Joana Austria

“The Ocean Deep” by Gezryl Peter Tamayo 

“Next Chapter” by Ronan Gabriel Erni 

“Aftertaste” by Denelle Justine T. Ramos 

“IN MEMORY OF PEACE” by Yvonne M. Bandong 

“STEEP” by Kyla Chantal P. Dela Torre 

“How to Die a Thousand Afternoons” by Alya Maria Inciso 

In perhaps the happiest page of 2022, from the 68th issue, courtesy of Mark Young, who now closes Otoliths with his 70th release, an issue which sings this final page. 

 

“Pisara” | Ran Manansala

“Ang mga mag-aaral ng Unibersidad ng Pulo ay isa sa libu-libong mag-aaral na balisa’t galit sa estado ng bansa. Ilang buwan nang nakasara ang mga silid-aralan at nakakulong sa loob ng mga dormitoryo ang mga mag-aaral, lalong-lalo na ang mga pinuno ng napakaraming aligagang organisasyon. Ngunit, hindi apektado ang isang mag-aaral sa gitna ng gulo.”

Ituloy ang “Pisara” sa ACT Forum Online.

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Ran is a senior at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños. She has been writing stories ever since she was eight. When she isn’t daydreaming of plot points, she watches the latest anime, jams to K-pop, or has coffee with friends.

“On red-tagging, censorship, and book banning in Philippine university libraries” | Jecko Sanjorjo

 “The first reported instance of this book-purging is in Kalinga State University where books and documents on peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) were pulled out after a group of police and soldiers inspected the university library on September 1, 2021. Among the texts removed from the library are documents signed between the government and the NDFP during previous and historical peace negotiations, among several other NDFP documents. According to Evangeline Cabello, KSU’s chief librarian, she decided to remove the documents to “protect [the students] from being recruited to join communist groups,” adding that she acted voluntarily and thought that some not should have been removed. Moreover, she simply put the books “somewhere else” and had not turned them over to authorities (Subingsubing and Visaya).”

Ituloy ang “On red-tagging, censorship, and book banning in Philippine university libraries” sa ACT Forum Online.

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Jecko is a senior BA Communication Arts student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He is interested in criticism, cultural memory, and creative writing.

“Project Juan” | Kristhina Marie Catapia

“Dahan-dahan kong iminulat ang aking mga mata at tumambad sa aking harapan ang isang lalaking nakasuot ng magarang apron at salamin. Mukhang nasa 60 anyos na ang lalaki, hindi katangkaran at may pagkapatpatin. Agad na tumulo ang kanyang mga luha nang makitang gising na ako. Nagtataka akong umupo mula sa pagkakahiga at mas lalo pang tinitigan ang lalaki. Sino siya? Bakit siya umiiyak? Kilala niya ba ako?”

Ituloy ang “Project Juan” sa ACT Forum Online.

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Si Kim ay isang fourth year BA Communication Arts student mula sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Los Baños. Mahilig siyang magsulat ng mga istoryang ‘di-piksyon at balang araw ay pangarap niyang makapaglathala ng mga sanaysay tungkol sa mga kolektib na danas ng mga babae at ng mga Pilipino.