The Philippine Readers & Writers Festival (PRWF) is an extraordinary three-day weekend where various authors and speakers from publishing houses in the Philippines come together to talk about writing, books and publishing your own.
Now, reading and writing is not as widespread here as it is in the US or Canada. At least, that’s what I thought at first. So I was extremely surprised when our very own National Bookstore posted such an event on Facebook. The fact of the matter is, such a festival has actually been running for a number of years now, and I’m surprised this was the only time I managed to recognize it! Imagine my elation in having attended because I felt that this had been my late birthday present to myself.
Kudos and thanks to PRWF for the gorgeous Epic Reads/HarperTeen black tote bag. Photo taken by Ella Mae Garcia, 2016
You’ll be floored by all the talks available! I mostly went to the talks because I wasn’t exactly familiar with the international authors that came in the festival. (I haven’t read Anna Todd yet. Is that bad?)
On the first day, August 26; I went to talks like Untold Stories Inside: Writing about what you love and sharing it to the world which was hosted by Anvil Publishing, Teaching Young Adult Literaturealso by Anvil PublishingandThe We and the I: Stories Beyond the Pageby CNN Life. Every single one was so informative and empowering.
Sunday events on the 28th of August events were the most that had the most interesting talks! Imagine my frustration and my decision-making here. It’s like picking a favorite child. But in the end, I went to see Stranger Than Fiction: How Real Life Shapes Stories with panelists from Summit Books. Quark Henares was my favorite panelist here, and I am dying to read his Coming of Age book, and you should too! I also went to Writing Young Adult Fiction Today: Creating Stories for Diverse and Discriminating Readers sponsored by Anvil Publishing. This one was an informative and fun talk because we discussed about book diversity, like the LGBTQ+ community and more Asian/Non-American characters. I thought this was super amazing because the authors that paneled for this truly wanted us to write about Filipino characters. It was inspiring and moving. Panelist Ronald Limbroke the barriers and stereotypes of the queer community and I just absolutely adore him.
The best, for me,was perhaps the Book Blogging 101: Growing Web and Social Media Presence to Promote Books paneled by Filipino book bloggers! Anyway, the panelists were Hazel of Stay Bookish, Lyra of Defiantly Deviant, Eunice of Nerdy Talks Book Blog, Kai of Amaterasu Readsand Kate of The Bookaholic Blurbs. I learned a lot from these panelists, from book photography, to writing constructive and entertaining reviews, to requesting ARC’s (Advanced Readers’ Copies), to aesthetically arranging your blog, etc. It was enough to make the rest of the audience want to start a book blog, myself included!
This will probably be the best three-day weekend any reader or writer could possibly enjoy! National Bookstore has PRWF every year, so if you missed it once, don’t worry—there’s plenty more in the years to come.
The Bookish Goddess 