The community-based workshop aims to make the city a haven for creative writers

The Valenzuela City Cultural Affairs and Tourism Development Office  and the Valenzuela Writers Collective will conduct the 2018 Valenzuela Writers Workshop (VWW)  on April 14-15 at Museo Valenzuela.

The VWW is the first community-based and local government unit-funded writing workshop in the country, and is envisioned to be an annual creative writing fellowship of 12 new and emerging writers. It is aimed to make the city a haven for creative writers and to encourage creative works. Fellowships are open for poetry, fiction, personal essay and play/screenplay in Filipino or English.

To be eligible, an applicant must be 18 years or older, and should not have attended any regional and national writers’ workshops organized by reputable creative writing centers and institutes. Workshop is open to students, professionals, workers and out-of-school youths.

VWW will include lectures, critiquing sessions and other parallel activities to be facilitated by Gawad Dr. Pio Valenzuela awardees—poet and screenwriter Jerry Gracio of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, who also acts as workshop director; and Joselito delos Reyes, chair of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Department of Literature and the Humanities.

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They will be joined by Nonon Carandang of De la Salle University; Chuckberry Pascual of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies; and author Bebang Siy of the Intertextual Division of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Project proponent is Museo Valenzuela curator Jonathan Balsamo and the 2018 workshop coordinator is Valenzuela-based writer Roma Estrada.

Senior high school/college teachers of Literature/Panitikan, Filipino/English and Creative Writing/Malikhaing Pagsulat courses who wish to observe the sessions may send a letter of intent to the workshop coordinator through e-mail.

Call 09151968982 or visit the Valenzuela Writers Collective Facebook page.