It’s always a pleasure to welcome a new novelist into our ranks, and today will be one of those happy days when we acknowledge the arrival literally and figuratively of a new talent in our midst, Dr. Almira Astudillo Gilles, or just Almi to her friends.
Almi flew in from Chicago as one of 29 recipients of the 2012 Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas, which were given out last Dec. 5 by President Aquino at
Malacañang. I had met her at the ICOPHIL conference in Michigan last September, although she had introduced herself to me by email earlier, as a fellow Filipino eager to make contact -with other writers in the US and the Philippines.
Last Dec. 9, Almi also launched her first novel,
The Fires Beneath: Tales of Gold (San Francisco: Philippine American Writers and Artists Inc., 2012), at the
Ayala Museum. The novel deals with how a poor man’s discovery of ancient gold in the Philippine South changes him, his family, and his community. I haven’t finished reading the book, but I’ve been much impressed by her sharpness of eye and precision of language.
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