PAGDIRIWANG PHILIPPINE FESTIVAL 2024
Literary Reading
Pinoy Word Expressed Kultura Arts
presents
Agham, Pabula at Kultura
(Science, Myth and Culture)
The 2021 Pagdiriwang Festival Literary Reading
JASON TANAMOR is a Filipino-American author, writer, and entertainment interviewer. He also works as a contract specialist for the United States Department of Defense. His novels range in genre, from dark in nature to satirical and from young adult to children's. His last two novels, Anonymous and Drama Dolls, have received critical acclaim from major publications such as Publishers Weekly –who called him a "promising writer with lots of potential" and compared him to Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski – and. His newest novel, a NA urban fantasy about Filipino folklore (aswang) called Vampires of Portlandia, touches upon his love for campy horror stories.
ALLISON MASANGKAY (DJ PHENOYPE) is a sick and disabled queer Filipinx femme artist, scholar, and social justice advocate. As a DJ, their sets include a range of genres—especially Jersey club, soul, hip hop, and house. In 2018, Allison co-founded Kapatid Kollective alongside four other rad Filipinx femmes to organize arts & culture-based events during Filipino American History Month. KK facilitates spaces so that our communities can better imagine and collectively develop the many ways in which Filipinxs can heal ourselves, undo interconnected systemic oppressions, and thrive.
Since 2019, Phenohype has emerged as a writer and visual artist, utilizing prose and collage to highlight ways in which Filipinxs may explore embodiment beyond white supremacy. Their work in these media is published or forthcoming in UW Magazine, TAYO Literary Magazine, Papeachu Review, the Disability Visibility Project, and elsewhere. Allison is the author of Do Androids Dream In Color?, their first multimedia book of personal essays, speculative fiction, sociocultural theory, sounds, and visual art.
ANGELA GARBES is a Seattle-based writer specializing in food, bodies, women’s health, and issues of racial equity and diversity. Garbes began writing for The Stranger in 2006, and became a staff writer in 2014. Her piece“The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am” is the publication’s most-read piece in its twenty-four-year history, and the inspiration for Like a Mother. Garbes is an experienced public speaker, frequent radio and podcast guest, and event moderator. She grew up in a food-obsessed, immigrant Filipino household and now lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. Visit her online at angelagarbes.com.
KALAYO PESTAÑO (they/siya) is a community organizer and cultural worker born in southern Mindanao, Philippines. Kalayo’s cultural work includes producing and curating multimedia events, and creating music as hiphop artist rogue pinay. With a deep love of hiphop discovered as an immigrant youth, rogue pinay wrote verses as a way to reconnect with their roots and claim space as a queer filipina with a lot on their mind. Since 2006, rogue pinay has been inciting love and rage with incisive rhymes and raw delivery, rocking stages from your local block party to international music festivals.
After a decade of collaborations with an array of local talents, Kalayo co-produced their debut release “Blood Moon // The Things We Carry” in 2017. Their cultural works are featured in Rolling Stone, Autostraddle and most recently, in a book called Nourish. Kalayo’s current project is called Dragon Moon.
Live performance at 5th Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival (featuring Richard Arcelo and Kalu)
ROBERT FRANCIS FLOR, PhD, a Seattle native, was raised in the city’s Central Area and Rainier Valley. His poems appeared in Raven Chronicles, Poetry on the Bus, Soundings Review, Four Cornered Universe, 4 and 20 Journal, the Wanderlust Journal, the Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry Review, Baseball Bard, Poets Against the War, the Seattle Post Intelligencer (2005) and the Field of Mirrors anthology (2008), Voices of the Asian American Experience (2012) University of Santa Cruz and Where Are You From? the Thymos Book Project (2013), Portland, Oregon. His poetry chapbook Alaskero Memories was published by Carayan Press, Ltd in 2017.
His plays largely take place in Seattle's Filipino community. His full-length play Daniel’s Mood, was a Studio Lab selection (2011) at Freehold Theatre. Scenes from My Uncle’s Letters were read in the ACT Theatre Multicultural Playwrights Festival in 2014. The Injury (2013), Pinoy Hill (2014) in Pinakbet (2015) were performed in the Eclectic Theatre Festival. Salamangka’s Barber Shop was showcased at the Burien Actors Theatre (2015). These were performed again in 2018 at Seattle's Filipino Community Center. Mabuhay Majesty was produced at the Rainer Arts Center in 2017. Christmas Snow Globes was read at the Shawanee Playhouse in Pennsylvania in 2020. Reminisce, The Great Ube Baking Contest, Salamangka Returns and Pinoys Play Ball are plays in progress. The FAYTS was retitled to Adama and the Demons and currently in revision.
Robert co-chairs Pinoy Words Expressed Kultura Arts. He graduated from the Artist Trust 2010 EDGE Writers Development Program. In 2018, he received a King County 4Culture Fellowship Award. He is a member of the American Writers & Writing Programs, Academy of American Poets, Artist Trust, Theater for Puget Sound, Rain City Writers, Seattle Playwrights Circle and the Dramatist Guild.