Cover Jeepney Journey event at Rossmarkt: The National Book Development Board (NBDB) team with the Frankfurt Book Fair personnel, artist Danielle Florendo and Consul General Ivy Banzon
Jeepney Journey event at Rossmarkt: The National Book Development Board (NBDB) team with the Frankfurt Book Fair personnel, artist Danielle Florendo and Consul General Ivy Banzon
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At the 77th Frankfurt Book Fair, the Philippines claims its global literary space, restoring Rizal’s vision of imagination as a necessary fire
I am, as I wish, telling the story of the Frankfurt Book Fair in present tense forever. After all, books, whether about the past or about the future, are always in the now, as long as the reader is there, caught between the covers.
The book fair stretches before me, alive with the shimmer of language and light. Nations gather under the weight and wonder of words, each country carrying its stories like breath. On this world stage, the Philippines stands as Guest of Honour, our pavilion unfolding like a living dream, alive with music, movement and meaning. It is the National Book Development Board that has mounted our participation, realising a vision years in the making and placing Philippine literature at the centre of the global conversation.
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Above Poets Merlie Alunan, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and Marjorie Evasco are the literary speakers at the Frankfurt Book Fair opening
Poets Merlie Alunan, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and Marjorie Evasco are the literary speakers at the Frankfurt Book Fair opening
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I walk among writers of every stripe, poets, essayists, fictionists, food writers, comic artists and graphic novelists, among them Filipino literary luminaries Butch Dalisay, Ambeth Ocampo, Claude Tayag and Neni Sta Romana Cruz. National Artists Virgilio Almario (Rio Alma), Kidlat Tahimik and Ramon Santos move quietly among the throng. My mind swells with knowledge, inspiration, ideas and stray trivia, rich as food that begs to be walked off, turned into breath, thought, grace or a prompt for change.
Senator Loren Legarda opens the ceremony, her voice bridging past and present. She traces José Rizal’s journey through Germany, from Heidelberg to Wilhelmsfeld, where Noli Me Tangere was completed and where the phrase “Imagination Peoples the Air” first took form. “It was not arms the colonisers feared most, but ideas,” she reminds us. Words roused a nation, she says, and words still awaken conscience across continents. Her decade-long vision has made this moment possible, a literary homecoming and cultural awakening. “Ten years ago, I imagined this moment,” she says. “Knowing what I have always believed, that Filipino voices belong among the world’s greatest literatures.”
Above Senator Loren Legarda addressing the crowd
Senator Loren Legarda addressing the crowd
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The theme, “Imagination Peoples the Air,” lifts from Rizal’s novel a line once steeped in darkness and restores it as a metaphor of light. Stories inhabit the world, imagination fills the spaces between people, and language itself becomes presence. I carry this idea with me as I move through the pavilion, where performances, panels and books populate every corner. Poetry, prose, history, komiks and the performing arts intersect, demanding attention and curiosity.
Above A look at the Frankfurter Buchmesse fairgrounds
A look at the Frankfurter Buchmesse fairgrounds
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Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta recites May Panitikan Ba Para sa mga Puta (Is There Literature for Whores), a poem born of mishearing a line by Rio Alma about cats. Marjorie Evasco, Maria Rilkë Arguelles, and other poets read If I Must Die by the late Refaat Alareer in eight Philippine languages, accompanied by music that threads the air with resonance. I pause to watch Panaghoy ng Pinakamiserableng Babaeng Katha ni Rizal (Lament of the Most Wretched Woman Written by Rizal), theatre artist Camille Abaya holding the Proscenium stage with a study of wound and wit. We do not meet Sisa as a relic. We meet her as a ghost who refuses to expire, roaming Balete Drive and calling for Crispin and Basilio, her voice carrying the names of lost children everywhere, most of all in Gaza. I stop breathing as she begins to name them.
Above Liwaliw event at Hanau: Charisse Aquino-Tugade delivers opening remarks
Liwaliw event at Hanau: Charisse Aquino-Tugade delivers opening remarks
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Candy Gourlay, Ester Tapia and Maya Butalid share stories of home, exile and belonging, the kind that tug at the root of one’s passport. Analyn Salvador-Amores, Claudius Kamps and Christopher Kast revisit how 19th-century German explorers collected Cordillera artefacts, now digitally reconnected with the original communities. Filomeno Aguilar Jr, Lisandro Claudio and Patricia May Jurilla interrogate colonial perspectives through history and publishing. Red Constantino and Angel Velasco Shaw reflect on how their family’s scholarship inspired generations of activists. Translators Merlie Alunan and Kristian Cordero open discussions on nurturing the Philippines’ many languages and literary traditions. Rio Alma speaks on writing poetry for a nation, while Sarge Lacuesta and Tanya Yuson explore storytelling across mediums. Howie Severino and Nick Deocampo share insights on documentary storytelling, while Jay Ignacio and Russell Molina delve into the distinct identity of Philippine komiks. Music threads through it all with The Philippine Madrigal Singers, Song Weavers Philippines, Kuwerdas Filipinas and the Adat Paranublion Kulintang Ensemble, not to mention epic chanter and National Living Treasure Rosie Sula.
And I am here too, launching Misericordia, my first novel under Anvil Publishing, at the Philippine National Stand. To bring a story born in Manila to this gathering, among so many voices, feels both humbling and profound. A reminder that imagination travels farther than geography allows and that the printed page, even in a world of scrolling tabs, still holds a gravity no screen can replace.
Above Ambeth Ocampo leads the crowd for Rizal on the Go, a tour that retraces the footsteps of Rizal in Frankfurt
Ambeth Ocampo leads the crowd for Rizal on the Go, a tour that retraces the footsteps of Rizal in Frankfurt
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Karina Bolasco, head of the literature programme, frames the Philippines’ participation as a political act, not a posture of neutrality. “It is a declaration of the nation’s lived struggles, and of its literary vision to claim its own seat at an equal global table,” she says. Patrick Flores, curator of the Philippine Pavilion, emphasises the aim to foreground Philippine books, including their translations, with care, acuity, style and intellectual dignity, and to share with the world the robust history of Filipino writers and readers. Together, their guidance shapes the pavilion as a space where books forge belief, interrogate assumptions and hold us by the hand to imagine a just future.
Throughout the pavilion, I witness conversations that argue for dignity, insist on memory and justice, weigh the ghosts we bring and the truths we cannot ignore. I think of the lanzones-laden cover of the latest German translation of Noli Me Tangere and the tale of Maria Makiling extricating poison from the sweet fruit, explained by Ambeth Ocampo. I think of mothers keeping vigil in the dark, calling Sisa to speak the names of their disappeared. I think of the world watching, reading, listening, slowly understanding.
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Above The Philippine delegation to the FBM is welcomed
The Philippine delegation to the FBM is welcomed
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Above Author Miguel Syjuco reads from his novel ‘I Was the President’s Mistress’ at the Philippine Stand
Above NBDB Executive Director Charisse Aquino-Tugade
Author Miguel Syjuco reads from his novel ‘I Was the President’s Mistress’ at the Philippine Stand
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Imagination here is not gentle. It is fire. It is witness. It is joy. It is grief. Legarda’s words echo as I walk the pavilion: “Fire that burns away indifference. Fire that lights the dark corners where injustice hides.” Literature must provoke conscience and ignite courage. I feel that courage ripple through the audience, through the music, the readings, the laughter and the silence, and through every page that is opened and read.
In Frankfurt, we have taken our place among nations where reading is like breathing air. Our stories have entered the conversation, claiming their space without apology or compromise. The Philippine Pavilion is alive, each performance, talk, and signing a pulse in the broader rhythm of global literature.
But a book fair, even the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest and oldest book fair in the world, must come to a close. The pavilion must yield its ground to the next Guest of Honour, Czechia. Yet the truths and the courage ignited here do not require a stage. I return home with the delegation of Filipino writers as the living extension of this presence. In our own way, through the tireless pursuit of language, may we make a book fair of every story, ensuring that the imagination of a nation continues to people the air, page by page, in the uncompromising light of print.
Above Team Philippines at the Frankfurter Buchmesse fairgrounds
Team Philippines at the Frankfurter Buchmesse fairgrounds
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