Singing, for swans
Opening a blog, closing a chapter of life. Things have gotten surreal and it is not just the massive and mainly unwanted changes the SARS-COV-2 virus has wrought upon our world.
The people who know me professionally knew me as the Literary Editor of the Philippines Graphic magazine, and, to a lesser degree (though the job title is higher in rank) as one of its two associate editors. I was also the editor who handled the technology, health and science stories, and the office bastonera who reminded contributors to the reportage pages of their deadlines. Over a decade of my life went into that job, with a one-year break to put up another magazine for a sister company, and a short adventure with another magazine that is now defunct.
I’m sitting in my home writing cave, taking the time to review the years that sped by so quickly that I barely had time to breathe, let alone go into any form of introspection.
I began my life at the Graphic after ending a chapter in my life, too, one where I was hoofing it in the daily grind of a major broadsheet, where I’d spent five years of my life editing copy and, occasionally, writing a story or two. I’d left the Philippine Star in 2007, and I wanted a break from employment first, time to breathe.
So I did freelance work: For the Graphic, its sister-broadsheet the Business Mirror, for Medical Observer, and a bit of clerical work for the Agence France-Presse. Of all the newsrooms that gave me such warm welcomes, it was the Graphic newsroom I found myself most frequently at. I hung out with the editors there, writing my pieces, enjoying coffee with the newsroom people who eventually became family to me. On deadline days at the Graphic, even the newsroom tambay proof-read the copy, and for a kaliwaang-bayad P500 slipped into the copy by then editor in chief Inday Espina-Varona.
By early 2008, I was still the newsroom tambay. It wasn’t that I had no job offers. I did. But I didn’t take those offers. I loved the newsroom I hung out in. I loved the work of writing in the New Journalism style. More than anything, I was enjoying the freedom of freelancing. I reveled in the intelligence of the editors and staff of the Graphic. I’d fallen in love with the magazine, and I was still doing stories for Business Mirror and Medical Observer, and the occasional one-off job, so I didn’t really need much more than that. My writing then covered assignments sent my way, news analyses, and technology and science stories, with the odd health story coming in here and there. Those were my metier, my bread and butter.
By 2009, we needed a new literary editor, and that job was divided between then Graphic managing editor Joel Pablo Salud and myself: Joel read the Fiction pieces. I was in charge of reading the Poetry submissions. Graphic had to let go of my predecessor, Marra PL Lanot, because of budgetary concerns, and we were all sad about this, but determined to continue the Literary section, since this was part of the organic DNA of the Graphic. We have fought so hard for that section of the magazine, believe me.
We had the best support from Amba, as we affectionately called Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua: He supported our reportage and gave us a level of editorial freedom that is unprecedented in my 26 years as a journalist to date. We had a damn good foundation, no matter what our magazine’s financial straits may have been, and we took this gift and ran with it. Now I sit down and look back at the distance we’d run and I am grateful for the years I had in that newsroom.
When Inday left and Joel was promoted to editor in chief, Joel turned the entire literary shebang over to me, to which I protested with: “Me? But I am not well-liked in the literary community, you know that!” I’d chosen my first love of journalism over the literature that was my twin from childhood because an ex-boyfriend of mine had managed to create a scandal while we were in the UP Writer’s Workshop in Baguio City, you see. He’d plagiarized work from a comic book by Vertigo, and that was the story accepted by the workshop. When he got caught, the coward dragged me into his scandal and begged me not to leave him. I didn’t leave him, and he later left me, the faithless wretch. He also left me holding the bag and I really wasn’t anywhere near being the literati’s golden girl as the position of literary editor demands.
I was the last person, I argued with Joel, who should hold the exalted post of literary editor. Joel stayed his course and I accepted his better judgment. He was my editor in chief and I would do this job as literary editor as best I could, then. If he believed I could do it, then I would do it, or die trying. It was time to live outside the comfort of my introversion, and to let my hurts over the scandal that passed for a “literary career” go. It was time to look at what I could do for Philippine literature, and its writers, instead of nursing my own grudges. I had to become a better Alma. There were no two ways about it. I hope I have done that.
The litgraphic@gmail.com email address that has become well-known among our literary contributors was opened by Joel. It passed into my purview and care. Through this inbox came many beautiful pieces of fiction, many poems that stirred my senses. A huge number did not make the cut, but those that did were the very best of the lot, and I picked them each week, on a Monday that I devoted solely to the literary contributors’ work. Before we had the volume of submissions we’d had, I used to resort to making dukot the pieces we published off Facebook and other parts of the web. We kept up a call for submissions and promoted the heck out of the literary awards we gave just to reach the volume of submissions we received before the COVID-19 pandemic — a volume that made it difficult for me to answer each email, so I only answered those whose works made the cut, or could if revised.
When work didn’t immediately make the cut, but was promising, I emailed the contributors, making my recommendations for how the work could be revised so that it would make the cut.
English is not the primary language of many Filipinos, and I kept this in mind as I read the literary inbox submissions. I fought my own instincts for cruelty to be kind, because I’d wanted the same kindness often enough, and got it from the best folk in the literary circles here, but was denied that kindness by too many others who didn’t like me and probably never will. I had to face that head on and not seek refuge in journalism, and I did. Along the way, I became a member of the Manila Critics Circle and a judge of the National Book Awards, thanks to Joel (“damay-damay na ito!”).
This took place while I was still doing the other jobs on my table: Technology reportage, science stories, political pieces where necessary, analysis of bills and laws that were supported by interviews with experts, the regular pages that were my duty to deliver, the editing and proof-reading, for, in the end, we had no proof-readers. Love drove me through all of that: Love for the Graphic and its intrepid crew, love for Philippine letters, love for the writers in whose midst I found myself once again. Love conquers Alma, it seems.
What you now know of as the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards was once the Philippines Graphic Literary Awards, and it was just a highlight of the annual company Christmas party of Graphic and its sister under the Philippines Graphic Publishing Inc. banner, Cook magazine.
Under Joel’s leadership, we were able to take this to the next level, bringing the NJLA out into its own in 2011 at the Filipinas Heritage Library, complete with cakes and pastries with Graphic EIC and National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin’s face digitally printed in chocolate on the little pieces of patisserie.
Over the years, both Joel and I made ourselves visible and available at literary events — and this was as much to market and sell the magazine as it was to connect with the wunderkind of the literary scene. Was Joel the face of the Graphic? Yes, he was. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it, and that was our Jefe. Never doubt that.
Nick Joaquin had envisioned the Graphic newsroom as a place where young journalists and literary writers would have a haven, a place to learn, a platform from which to launch their work into the world. This was the task at hand when I came aboard as the Graphic literary editor, and I gave it my best shot every week, even during the short while I was gone from the newsroom in 2010 to put up another magazine for a sister company, and later, when I helped conceptualize and set up the Envoys & Expats section of the Business Mirror.
What Graphic was able to do while Joel and I were in the magazine’s staffbox, was to add to the NJLA by setting up the Poet of the Year honors, a publisher’s choice award for which we were unable to get prize money, but which did have support from sponsors who offered, on most years, a material prize. We were able to get the support of companies like Acer Philippines, who provided laptops to our Fiction winners.
The NJLA came into its own, with its judges being the best of the best among the literati: Krip Yuson, Dr. Gemino H. Abad, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Susan Lara, Charlson Ong, Sarge Lacuesta, Dean Francis Alfar. We established a tradition that eclipsed our company Christmas party and put the Graphic firmly in the consciousness of our literary community.
We also observed the Buwan ng Wika celebrations by publishing work written in the many languages of Inang Bayan, from all across the archipelago, with translations, across all of our August issues. Eventually, the Graphic also made it a regular thing to publish works in Filipino, even outside of the Buwan ng Wika festivities. Small victories, yes, but notable ones.
By 2016, it was announced at the NJLA night that we would have an international-level NJLA. Come 2019, we had made that a reality, with the first NJLA Asia-Pacific that saw Singaporean writer Alvin Pang on its illustrious panel of judges, along with Hidalgo and Yuson.
I’d flown to Singapore in 2017 on a health story assignment, and I took time on the side to talk to Pang about how this could be done. He told me over cheese and wine that “this is a first for the region, and it is apt that it comes out of the Philippines. You will make history if you can pull this off.”
Well, we made history. Coming out of a newsroom where the budgets were so tight its editors had to buy their own laptops, this was no small feat, and the experience was a good one, full of lessons in how to publish work from authors in the ASEAN-member states, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.
The works of the winning authors in the NJLA Asia-Pacific were published in a monthly pullout of the BusinessMirror called Tony & Nick, to honor the friendship between Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua and Nick Joaquin. It was built as a partnership between BusinessMirror and the Graphic and, until a few weeks ago, I was its literary editor, too.
What we did at the Graphic was deliver the best news analysis written in the New Journalism style that we could, as well as the best literature offerings we could find. We trained interns, too, and shared as much of our knowledge as we could.
They say you will be known by your deeds. These were the deeds of one set of editors of the Philippines Graphic: Joel Pablo Salud, editor in chief; Psyche Roxas-Mendoza, managing editor; Fil Elefante, associate editor; and me.
Psyche and Fil kept the magazine steady, managing everything else, on top of the stories they chased down and wrote. All four of us editors worked to make the NJLA happen and happen smoothly, whether it was Joel inviting the guests, Psyche checking the stage and setup, Fil keeping the day-to-day ops going or me doing the lit ed thing. We worked as a team, along with the pioneers of the newsroom who supported all our efforts, and the heroes of our advertising department bringing in the much-needed funds each blessed week.
The Graphic is not singing off, and that is good. Joel, Fil and I, however are off to new adventures, even as we wish Psyche the best — for she is the one who will hold the fort we are leaving.
I can’t sing, so I’d rather not call this a swan song. I can, however, swim, and I look forward to the oceans and the horizon now set so promisingly before me. It has been a wild ride, a pleasure, a rare privilege, and an honor not many are given, this job I’ve had for over a decade.
There are benefits to being a tambay, I tell you. Sometimes it helps you grow up. Sometimes it puts you where you actually make history. Well, this history lesson is over. I need to get my jam on. See you all on the next journey, and thank you for being with me on this one.
And since I opened a blog, I will keep it open. Hi there! How are you?
