THE THIRD edition of the revived Tomas includes contributions from Filipino-American writers, giving the revived journal of the Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies (CCWLS) an international gloss, said its director, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo.
Contributors include Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and R. Zamora Linmark.
Brainard is an award-winning author and editor of 19 books, including Magdalena and Woman with Horns and Other Stories. She grew up in Cebu and became an American citizen in 1972. She founded the Philippine-American Literary House.
A dual citizen of the US and the Philippines, Linmark is based in Honolulu and wrote the best-selling novel, Rolling the R’s, whose stage adaptation had its world premiere in Hawaii in 2008. He also has three poetry volumes to his name.
But the bulk of contributions still came from alumni writers, Hidalgo said.
Tomas was founded in 2000 as the official journal of the then UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, whose inaugural director was the poet-teacher Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta. It discontinued late in the decade when the center entered a period of uncertainty,
The journal was revived in 2013 upon the restoration of the CCWLS. M.D.L. Macalino
