Authors & Books

DR. STEPHANIE MARIE COO is a Filipino-Chinese author of the multi-award-winning book Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth-century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896 (2019), which won the 39th National Book Award for Best Book in History (2022) and the IIAS-ICAS biennial International Book Prize for Best Book in Humanities (2021). She was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universidad de Granada (Spain). Currently, she holds an Associate Professorship at the Ateneo de Manila University while serving as an auxiliary researcher at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

KRISTIAN SENDON CORDERO is a poet, fictionist, essayist, translator, and an independent filmmaker. He has written five poetry collections in Filipino, Bikol and Rinconada, the latest two both received the National Book Awards for Poetry in Filipino and Bikol in 2014. As a translator, he translated selected poetry of Rainier Maria Rilke, Minatubod Ako Sa Diklom (I Have Faith in the Night), Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, An Pakagimata ni Gregor Samsa in Bikol and An Mapara Sa Kinaban/Ang Maglaho Sa Mundo, selected poetry of Jorge Luis Borges in Bikol and Filipino under the translation grant from Programa Sur of Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores Y Culto of the Republic of Argentina. He was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines for Arts and Literature in 2022. He is the co-head of the Translation Committee for the Philippine Guest of Honor in the 2025 Frankfurt Buchmesse and serves as the director of the Ateneo de Naga University Press.

DARYLL DELGADO is the author of the novel Remains (German edition: ‹berreste, Alfred Krˆner Verlag, slated for release in spring 2025), finalist of the Philippine National Book Award for Best Novel in English (2021), and the collection, After the Body Displaces Water, winner of the Philippine National Book Award for Best Book of Short Fiction and finalist of MadrigalGonzales First Book Award (2013). Delgado heads the research and stakeholder engagement programs of an international nongovernment organization and writes global reports on labor migration and precarity, women, and workers’ rights.

DR. MONICA FROHLICH studied German and French Studies, as well as German as a Foreign Language, at University of Bamberg, Germany. After completing her doctorate degree in German contemporary literature (Christoph Ransmayr’s ‘Aesthetics of Disappearance’), she became the Head of Department of Communication and Alumni at the University of Bamberg, where she was responsible for internal and external university communications. She is a lecturer of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the University of the Philippines-Diliman since 2021.

RENREN GALENO is a comic author and illustrator from Davao City, Philippines. She illustrated the Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2024) Searching for Maura for the Washington Post. Her first book, Sa Wala (German edition: Sa Wala – F¸r nichts, Dantes Verlag 2024), was published in 2023 and won the 42nd National Book Awards’ Best Graphic Novel and Comics in English in 2024. Ren2x likes animal-shaped ceramics and looking for fat frogs.

PAOLO HERRAS is the Co-Founder of Komiket, a non-profit organisation that advocates for Filipino comics, and the Festival Director of the Philippine International Comics Festival (PICOF). His graphic novel, Strange Natives (German edition: Strange Natives – Die vergessenen Erinnerungen einer vergesslichen alten Dame, Dantes Verlag 2024), was a National Book Award Finalist and is currently translated in German, French, and Italian. Paolo directed the film adaptation of his graphic novel, Buhay Habangbuhay (Life Afterlife), for the 2nd CineFilipino Film Festival.

ANNETTE HUG is a writer and translator from Zurich. She studied Women and Development Studies in the Philippines from 1992 to 1994. Her novel, Wilhelm Tell in Manila, was awarded the Swiss Literature Prize in 2017. In 2024, her first translation from Tagalog/Filipino was published (Luna Sicat Cleto: Offenes Meer). Two novels and a historical novella will follow in 2025.

J. PHILIP IGNACIO is a musician, actor, documentary filmmaker, improvisational theatre veteran, and Co-Founder of Third World Improv, the premiere improv school in the Philippines. His first graphic novel, Alandal (German Edition: Alandal 1, Dantes Verlag 2024), won the 40th National Book Award and 7th National Children’s Book Award. His book has German, Burmese, and English editions.