Lakambini Sitoy

Lakambini A. Sitoy (born 1969) is a Filipino author, journalist and teacher. Her novel Sweet Haven was published in French translation by Albin Michel as Les filles de Sweethaven in October 2011, in the original English by the New York Review of Books in 2014, and by Anvil Publishing Inc. in 2015. She received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom, in 2003. ^[1]

Biography

She was born in the Philippines in 1969,^[2] and earned a degree in Biology from Silliman University. She has an MA from Roskilde University, Denmark, in the fields of English Studies and Cultural Encounters, both under the Department of Culture and Identity.

Career

As a journalist, Sitoy was a lifestyle and cultural section editor for various papers, and was a columnist and section editor for the Manila Times. She has also received nine prizes in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in the Philippines (1995, 1996, 1998, 2000 (2), 2001, 2005 (2), 2007^[3] as well as a Philippines Free Press Award (1994).

She currently teaches English at Studieskolen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Works

Sitoy has published a novel, Sweet Haven (Anvil, 2015) and two collections of short stories in Manila. Mens Rea and Other Stories was published by Anvil in 1999 and received a Manila Critics' Circle National Book Award that same year. Jungle Planet was published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2006^[4] and was shortlisted for the Manila Critics' Circle National Book Award for that year. Sitoy was among 21 authors on the Man Asian Literary Prize's long list in 2008. ^[5] The novel Sweet Haven was her first, and it was published in French by Albin Michel in October 2011.^[6]

Her short stories have appeared in magazines such as Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic and Story Philippines. They have appeared in various anthologies in the Philippines, such as Likhaan Anthology of Poetry and Fiction (published by the University of the Philippines Press) and The Best Philippine Stories, a 2000 anthology published by Tahanan Books and edited by Isagani Cruz. Other stories have appeared in Manoa, the literary journal of the University of Hawaii;^[7] Wake, an anthology of stories, essays and poems about Southeast Asia published in Britain to benefit victims of the 2004 tsunami; and Ansigter, an anthology of Southeast Asian short stories published by Forlaget Hjulet in Copenhagen in 2008.^[8]

Sitoy has received writing fellowships from the National Writers' Workshop in Dumaguete (1989) and the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop (1990). She has also received nine prizes in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards^[3] and a Philippines Free Press Award (1994). She currently resides in Denmark.

References

1. http://www.uea.ac.uk/lit/fellowships/david-wong-fellowship/formerfellows^{[dead link]}
2. Abad, Gémino H.; Pantoja-Hidalgo, Cristina (2008). The children's hour: stories on childhood. UP Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-971-542-541-4.
3. . Archived from the original on 27 August 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
4. Sitoy, Lakambini A. (2008) Jungle Planet and Other Stories. University of the Philippines Press. 201 pages. ISBN 971-542-466-X
5. . Archived from the original on 1 June 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
6. Les Filles de Sweethaven - Lakambini Sitoy.
7. Sitoy, Lakambini A (2004). "Jungle Planet". Manoa. 16 (2): 109–115. doi:10.1353/man.2004.0045. S2CID 201744024. Project MUSE 175517.
8. "Ansigter".