The Balikbayan Artist and Other Chismis in the Filipino Diaspora

Saturday, March 15th
6-7:30pm

Join us for a book party to celebrate the U.S. launch of Eileen R. Tabios’ The Balikbayan Artist hosted by the Peninsula Book Collaborative with PAWA & friends: Edwin Lozada, Beverly Parayno, Dina Klarisse, Aileen Cassinetto, & Melinda Luisa de Jesús

Panelist bios:

Eileen R. Tabios loves books and has released over 70 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in 11 countries. She is the author of two novels, The Balikbayan Artist (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024) and DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times (AC Books, New York, 2021), as well as an autobiography, The Inventor (Marsh Hawk Press, 2023). She has also edited, co-edited or conceptualized 15 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays which has involved hundreds of writers and artists around the world.

Edwin Lozada is an author and translator, and the editor of Field of Mirrors: An Anthology of Philippine American Writers (2008). An educator in the California public school system for over 30 years, he is also a member of the Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española correspondiente a la Academia Real Española, President of Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA) Inc., Executive Director of the Filipino American International Book Festival, and Co-Founder of The Hinabi Project, a Bay Area nonprofit which seeks to educate and foster appreciation for indigenous Philippine textiles.

Beverly Parayno is the author of the story collection WILDFLOWERS (PAWA Press, 2023), which was shortlisted for the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Awards; winner of a 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal and a 2024 National Indie Excellence Award for Asian American & Pacific Islander Fiction; and finalist for the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards and 2024 American Fiction Awards. She serves on the board of PAWA and the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, Ireland. She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills and co-facilitates the Cameron Park Library Writers Workshop.

Dina Klarisse Dugar is the author of Handspun Rosaries (2022). Her work has been published in ASU’s Canyon Voices, The Daily Drunk Mag, Chopsticks Alley, and Kalopsia Literary Journal, among others. She serves on PAWA’s Board of Directors, and is a member of the Filipino American International Book Festival’s organizing committee. 

Aileen Cassinetto is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and San Mateo County’s poet laureate from 2019 to 2022. The co-founder of Paloma Press, she serves on PAWA’s advisory board and the Filipino American International Book Festival’s advisory committee as well as the San Mateo County Commission on the Status of Women.

Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús is former Chair and Associate Professor of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of  Filipina/American Feminisms (Routledge, 2005). Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was released by Paloma Press in March 2018.