Berichte über das Heimatland

Aurora Almendral is a Filipina American journalist and writer based in London. She has worked in over 30 countries, from Somalia to Mexico, and has lived in Thailand, Spain, New York and the Philippines, where she maintains a home in Cebu. Her journalism has been published by The New York Times and National Geographic Magazine, and has been recognized with multiple awards, including from the Overseas Press Club of America, and a Hillman Prize for investigative journalism. She is currently working on her first book.

Marga Ortigas is a veteran international journalist and bestselling author from Manila. After decades of reporting from the frontlines of conflict and climate change for CNN and Al Jazeera, she stepped away from the camera and focused on the page, with her first four books published by Penguin Random House Southeast Asia. Her novel The House on Calle Sombra, an epic family saga, was highly-acclaimed as a lyrical if troubled love letter to her native Philippines, while her second book,There Are No Falling Stars in China (& Other LIfe Lessons from a Recovering Journalist), is an inspirational collection of essays from her decades on the field as a reporter. Her two most recent works, God’s Ashes and WTF?!: Woman Turning F*fty, have been featured in book fairs across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and India.

Marga was a British Council Chevening Scholar and was awarded by the International Committee of the Red Cross for Humanitarian Reporting on the Philippines. A storyteller at heart, she continues to write—both nonfiction and fiction—with the urgency of a journalist and the intimacy of a poet.

Dorian S. Merina is a poet, journalist and translator who lives in the Northern Philippines. He is the author of Di Achichúk: Poems and Images from Batanes (Ateneo de Manila University Press), winner of the 2020 Gintong Aklat Award and a finalist for the Philippines’ National Book Award, two chapbooks of poetry, Stone of the Fish, and The Changegiver, and a spoken word album, Heaven is a Second Language. His new book, yndio arxipelago, will be released by the University of the Philippines Press in late 2025.

For more than fifteen years, Merina has led a community-based project to record and document Laji, the indigenous oral poetry of Batanes. His archiving and translating efforts are open to the public at ivatanlaji.com, a digital space that also preserves the songs, testimonies and stories of elder Laji singers. He is the co-founder of the community library, Aklatan Savidug, in Sabtang, Batanes, and teaches media studies at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is a tribal member of the Ivatan people of Batanes and is of mixed ancestry (Filipino – Irish – German). More about him at dorianmerina.com.