This week, our editors bring news of publications with big reputations, celebrations of nature writing in the Himalayas, and a new city joining the prestigious line-up of UNESCO Cities of Literature. Read on to find out more!
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Spain
From November 5 through 11, the Romanian Language and Culture Center at the University of Granada, Spain hosted a series of events featuring the major voices and rising stars of contemporary Spanish poetry, some of whom included writers with Spanish-Romanian identities, connections, or collaborations. Amongst them, the prolific and multiply awarded Romanian-Spanish poet and painter Mariana Feride Moisoiu was given top-billing, and people crowded in for her reading-performance.
Feride Moisoiu is the founder of the international festival Mujer, Manantial de Vida (Woman, Source of Life), in addition to coordinating the festival Grito de Mujer (Woman’s Scream) in Villa del Prado, Madrid, which focuses on women’s voices, empowerment, and gender equality. She serves as the executive director of the literary magazine Krytón (also published in Villa del Prado), while also being the honorary president of the Casa Nacional de Rumanía (Romanian House/Institute) in Getafe. The event in Granada presented an opportunity for Feride Moiosiu to launch the latest issue of Krytón, coedited with poet Cristian Mihail Deac, which pays tribute to the journal’s founder, Cornel Drinovan. During her reading, the poet moved the audience through a serene and relentless, indomitable cadence, one that placed lyric femininity at the heart of a multifaceted—political, sentimental, and cosmic—vision.
Another one-of-a-kind feminine lyrical voice was also present in Grenada—though not in person but in translation: Asymptote past contributor Flavia Teoc. The poet graced the cover of the latest issue of the Romanian-Spanish journal Agora, also released at the University of Granada, which included a selection of the poet’s original Romanian-language work alongside their Spanish-language translations by Felix Nicolau and Dragoş Cosmin Popa. Together, they masterfully capture her unmistakable fusion of subdued passion, peaceful disconsolateness, and edgy non-complacency in tone, as well as the nomadism in the verses’ diverse vistas—whether marine, desertic, Nordic, or subtextually eschatological.
The other major recent event in Romanian and Romanian-international literature was the release of O. Nimigean’s novel O nouă ultimă zi (A New Last Day). The long-awaited book only came out in October from Polirom Press, but news of the text has long been viral on social media. Nimigean has been living in Paris for over fifteen years, and this latest bulky autobiographical novel is the sequel to one published in Romania (Rădăcina de bucsau, Root of the Boxwood) before the writer’s immigration (or rather, before he began splitting his time between the two countries). Rădăcina de bucsau was a critical and popular hit (with a possible third edition currently in the works), and now the more cosmopolitan O nouă ultimă zi seems to already be enjoying a similar reception. As for the novel itself, one can only say that the ‘autobiographical’ in Nimigean’s case involves a complex and riveting mix of the everyday, the political, the existentially introspective and socially critical, a highly refined linguistic and cross-genre chameleonic fluency, off-hand self-deriding erudition and jeremiads, and perhaps most significantly, the uncompromising yet self-corroding thrust for an impossible comprehensive testimony.
Sayani Sarkar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
The beginning of the cold months in India herald various literary festivals and award ceremonies. Amongst them, the nature writer Stephen Alter was awarded the inaugural Radisson Himalayan Echoes Nature Prize, which celebrates excellence in nature writing and conservation, at the Himalayan Echoes festival. Founded by Janhavi Prasada and Namita Gokhale, the annual festival is held in Nainital, amidst the picturesque forests of Abbotsford Estate, and has attracted artists, writers, musicians, environmentalists, and thinkers from across India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Now in its tenth year, the festival remains very much rooted in the cultural and ecological spirit of the Himalayas.
Alter is an American author born in Mussoorie, India, and has written more than twenty books of both fiction and non-fiction, most of which focus on the Himalayan region. With this new accolade, readers may be interested to revisit some of Alter’s works like Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth, which describes the author’s journeys across India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and China in a vibrant biography of the broader Himalayan region. The book which interests me the most, however, is a mystery novel set against the backdrop of the Sino–Indian war in 1962; Birdwatching follows an American ornithologist embroiled in a murder mystery, and features a cast of intriguing characters from Himalayan towns—including an Indian Military Intelligence officer and a Sherpa in the town of Kalimpong.
From the mountains and down to the city, the winners of the 2025 Mumbai LitFest book awards were announced on November 9, covering five categories across fiction, non-fiction, and business. The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Hindi novelist and magical realist poet, Vinod Kumar Shukla, adding to his previous accomplishments of being honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for the best Hindi work in 1999, as well as being the first Indian author to receive the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature in 2023.
Additionally, Gujarati poet Sitanshu Yashaschandra was named the Poet Laureate at the festival; Island by Sujit Saraf won the book of the year in the fiction category; and Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine by Dhirendra K Jha won in the non-fiction category. The Publisher of the Year went to Penguin Random House India.
And finally, the Vizag Junior Literary Fest 2025, organised by the Lit Lantern Culture and Literature Society, was held on November 8 and 9 at the seaside city of Visakhapatnam. Amongst its many sessions were storytelling and illustration workshops for children, held with writers and cartoonists. Other events included puppetry, as well as sessions on body positivity, mindfulness, and leadership. Being in its fourth year, the festival and attracted significant number of participants and created a vibrant environment of literary engagement for young minds in India—something that should be more encouraged in literary spaces.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
The city of Dumaguete in the Central Visayas region has been officially designated a UNESCO Creative City of Literature, bolstering its status as a cultural mecca and becoming the first in the Philippines to receive the honour. As a part of a cohort of ten newly minted literary cities—including Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom, Abuja in Nigeria, Celje in Slovenia, Conakry in Guinea, Gdańsk in Poland, Kahramanmaraş in Türkiye, Lund in Sweden, San Luis Potosí in Mexico, and Tangier in Morocco—the proclamation places Dumaguete alongside Jakarta, Indonesia (declared in 2021) as the first two Cities of Literature in Southeast Asia.
The designation recognises Dumaguete’s rich literary heritage and its thriving art scene, which includes the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, the oldest of its kind in Asia. The workshop was founded in 1962 by two Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumni, National Artist for Literature Edith L Tiempo and her husband, fictionist-essayist Edilberto K Tiempo, and decisively planted the seed of American New Criticism into Anglophone Philippines.
Deemed a second home by generations of Filipino writers who write in English, Dumaguete also hosts a network of indie presses, local writers’ coteries, book fairs, and the annual Dumaguete Literary Festival. In a statement posted on their official Facebook page, the festival feted the pivotal moment, stating that the title ‘celebrates the city’s long literary legacy, from the Silliman Writers Workshop to generations of authors, poets, and storytellers who’ve made Dumaguete the city of stories’.
Being a City of Literature, however, is beyond a simple marker of prestige; it is a mandated engagement. By entering the ranks of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), Dumaguete is now duty-bound to place creative and cultural industries at the heart of its local development plans and to collaborate proactively on the international front, as the designation is foreseen to boost cultural tourism and launch Dumaguete as a key international hub for literary diplomacy. In return, the city must advocate freedom of speech and of expression, champion the literary arts, and make sure that its literary productions reach diverse audiences and readerships. It will also take part in a transnational exchange of industry standards with other Creative Cities while going through a quadrennial review to monitor its growth.
In another announcement, Quezon City in the National Capital Region was named a UNESCO Creative City of Film, thus adding to the the ranks of other Creative Cities in the country: Baguio (City of Crafts and Folk Art), proclaimed in 2017; Cebu (City of Design), proclaimed in 2019; and Iloilo (City of Gastronomy), proclaimed in 2023.
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