Contributions are now welcome for the first special exclusively literary issue of Kritika Kultura, the international online journal of language, literary and cultural studies published by the Department of English of Ateneo de Manila University. This issue is intended to be an anthology of new Philippine writing.

The Philippine literary community has a relatively longstanding tradition of releasing anthologies focusing on young writers. However, it can be gleaned that the notion of the “new” remains unarticulated, as recent anthologies simply focus on the “young,” and what becomes apparent is the persistent maintenance of an aesthetics solidified in various creative writing institutions and workshops, a notion that is rapidly rendered inaccurate by a healthy production of writing that these anthologies do not include.

What this issue of Kritika Kultura intends to accomplish is to represent the kind of writing that is rarely published, the kind that is not often legitimized by mainstream publications. The kind of writing that we, as editors, can confidently call “new.”

New, in this case, as the word that most succinctly describes literary texts that are mindful of—by way of formal response/appropriation and/or thematic confrontation—several cultural phenomena such as the preponderance of piracy, the simultaneous/schizophrenic sociopolitical conditions of the nation, the “new” government that includes so many of the old names, the highly provisional stances in criticism pertaining to society and art, the currency and increasing value of topicality and ephemera (as evidenced by BPOs, SEOs, and Facebook), the persistent dominance of celebrity culture, and the gossip paradigm of discourse. The anthology welcomes contributions that transgress genre boundaries, revise traditional modes and forms, formally engage with the largely oral, nontextual/extratextual literary practices of the Filipino audience, and display a technical alertness to the quandaries presented by blog-driven writing, Facebook fiction, protest poetry, the malleability of languages, the hegemony of academic publishing in “legitimate” literature, the dominion of western literary models, and, in light of these, the strategic and arguably fictionalizing construction of Filipino identity.

Contributions are welcome from Filipino writers who have not yet published books of their own. Submissions can be in any language, but English translations must be provided. Multiple submissions are accepted, but each submission (belonging to a particular genre) has a 5,000-word count limit. Submissions must not have appeared in national publications. When emailing submissions, provide a genre-label (such as Poetry or Nonfiction) for each. Submissions may be emailed to kk.litissue@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2010. The issue will be released in February 2011.

Mark Anthony Cayanan
Conchitina Cruz
Adam David