Featured Women Authors of Ateneo University Press

Meet some of our astounding Filipina authors this Women's Month! Here are Q&A sessions, conversations, a poetry reading, and a lecture for you to get to know our authors better.

Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz is a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and is Executive Director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation. She was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She holds a PhD in Southeast Asian and International History from Yale University. Nicole wrote Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912. It was published by Ateneo University Press in 2020.

Watch her Ask the Author episode here where she answers a mix of academic, fun, and random questions sent by her readers. She even tells us which scholarly feedback made her feel most "kilig!" 

Emmily Magtalas Rhodes is a freelance writer. She was born during Marcos-era martial law and grew up sheltered in the suburbs of Manila, where she only caught glimpses of the political climate from newspapers, TV, and the radio. A shy child, she took refuge in books and comics and kept a journal from a young age. She currently lives in a spa town in England with her husband and two sons. Emmily is the author of the novel What It Means To Be Malaya.

Watch Emmily and artist Joy Watford's conversation about the characters in her debut novel What It Means To Be Malaya, what inspired her to write the novel, and her take on dynamic female friendships here. 

Criselda Yabes has published eight books, including Broken Islands. It follows Below the Crying Mountain, which won the UP Centennial Literary award in 2008 and was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010. A journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, she worked as a correspondent for the international press in Manila, covering politics and coups as well as other major events overseas.

Award-winning author Cris Yabes is faced with tough questions in this episode of Ask the Author. Find out how she fares here. 

Jessica Zafra has written two collections of short stories, as well as a dozen collections of essays on film, literature, travel, rock music, popular culture, and current affairs. She has received Palanca Awards for her short stories, and the National Book Award for her collection of essays.

Her essays have also appeared in the New Yorker and Newsweek. She was editor-in-chief of Flip: The Official Guide to World Domination, and Manila Envelope. She conducts writing workshops, hosts a monthly book club, and does a podcast called Podcats. She wrote two Ateneo Press books, The Age of Umbrage and The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra.

Catch Jessica's Fr. Henry Lee Irwin, SJ, Professorial Chair lecture titled "Fiction vs. the Apocalypse by Jessica Zafra." This was recorded last March 3, 2020 at Escaler Hall, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights campus, Quezon City. Watch Part 1 and Part 2.

Caroline Hau is Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. Born and raised in Manila, she was educated at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and Cornell University. Her books include Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980; The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation, and Region in and beyond the Philippines; Elites and Ilustrados in Philippine Culture; and Interpreting Rizal. She is the author of two story collections, Recuerdos de Patay and Other Stories and Demigods and Monsters: Stories, and a novel, Tiempo Muerto.

Watch her take part in A Novel Conversation: Aesthetics and Disaster Politics with Criselda Yabes and Daryll Delgado here.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of poetry collections College Boy, The Proxy Eros, Burning Houses, Hush Harbor, and Eros Redux. She obtained an MFA from the New School University in 2004 and has since taught in major universities in Manila. Katigbak-Lacuesta has also coedited various literary Filipino poetry anthologies for Cordite Poetry Review and Vagabond Press. In 2019, she coedited The Achieve of, The Mastery: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-’90s to 2016 with Dr. Gemino Abad.

Listen to her read a poem from College Boy here.