Bino Realuyo

Bino A. Realuyo is a Filipino-American novelist, poet, community organizer and adult educator. He was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. He lived mostly in New York City. His acclaimed novel, The "Umbrella Country" published in 1999 by "Ballantine Reader's Circle", Random House was included in "Booklist's Top Ten First Novels of 1999". Upon release, the novel reached the #2 spot in the Philippines. The "Umbrella Country" was also a nominee for the Barnes and Noble "Discover Great Writers Award" 1999 and a recipient of an Asian American "Members' Choice" Literary Award 2000.

Realuyo's first poetry collection, "The Gods We Worship Live Next Door" won the 2005 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, selected by Grace Schulman, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York and poetry editor of The Nation. It was released by the University of Utah Press in March 2006. The Philippine edition of "The Gods We Worship Live Next Door" will be released by Anvil Press in the Philippines in 2008, marking his very first book publication in his birth country.

He is a regular contributor to The Literary Review and guest edited its special issue on contemporary Filipino and Filipino-American literature in Spring 2000. He is also the editor of "The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American writings about New York City," a collection commemorating 100 years of Asian American presence in New York City. The anthology was published by the Asian American Writers' Workshop and Temple University Press in 1999, and awarded a PEN Open Book Award 2000.

Realuyo began his writing through his plays and poetry in elementary school. He wrote in his native language but later on shifted to English when his family immigrated to the United States when he was a teenager. Since co-founding Asian American Writers' Workshop [ [http://www.aaww.org Asian American Writers' Workshop ] ] while in his early twenties, he has been published in major literary journals, magazines and anthologies in the United States including The Nation, Manoa, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, New Letters, and The Kenyon Review. His work is widely anthologized and reviewed internationally. Most recently, he is included in the Norton Anthology "Language for a New Century."

Background

Realuyo is dedicated to social change, inspired by his father, the late Augusto Roa Realuyo, an architect and engineer and survivor of the Bataan Death March and Japanese Concentration Camps in the Philippines during World War II. His next poetry collection, "On which the Summer Leans" will chronicle his father's experiences during World War II, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's recruitment of young Filipinos into the U.S. Army through the terrors of the Bataan Death March and Japanese Camps to the denial of their war-time benefits as a result of the approval by the U.S. Congress of the Rescission Act of 1946.

As a community organizer, Realuyo has worked for human rights organizations and labor unions in New York City. However, for the past 12 years, he has worked in adult education as a program manager in workforce related labor unions, and now, as a classroom teacher in a welfare program in New York City. As an educator, he believes in Freirian pedagogical approaches to education--teaching the word by teaching the world. His specialization is the integration of technology into ESOL adult literacy classroom.

He is a world traveler, with deep interest in diverse cultures. His major in college lead him to travel between the U.S. and South America. After receiving his degree and bed-bunking from one country to another, he decided to return to his life long passion of creative writing while working full-time as a community organizer in New York's marginalized communities. However, he has made a commitment to spending a month every year traveling and immersing himself in different cultures. In the past two years, he has spent his summers in Brazil. He is multilingual, proficient in Tagalog and Spanish and currently studying Brazilian portuguese.

Affiliations and awards

Among his numerous literary awards and fellowships are a Van Lier Foundation Fellowship for poetry, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from Poetry Society of America, a New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship for fiction, an Urban Artist Grant for fiction, and a Valparaiso Literary Fellowship for fiction.

He has recently finished a novel-in-stories about the Filipino American experience in New York City, titled, "The F.L.I.P Show" (recipient of an Urban Artist Grant) and is currently working on a second novel, "The Ashen Parts" (recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship).

Realuyo regularly travels the country for university readings and lectures. A resident of Manhattan, Realuyo has a a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from the School of International Service of the American University in Washington, D.C., and Universidad Argentina de la Empresa in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He is an adjunct faculty member of Fairleigh Dickinson University's new International MFA in Creative Writing and also serves as a member of Fairleigh Dickinson University's Global Virtual Faculty.

References

External links

* [http://www.binoarealuyo.com Bino Realuyo home page]
* [http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0399/realuyo/ Bold Type Random House]
* [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25058 The Umbrella Country Random House]
* [http://www.uofupress.com/store/product31.html The Gods We Worship Live Next Door Univ Utah Press]
* [http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/262 Pif Magazine]
* [http://www.nypress.com/19/19/news&columns/feature.cfm New York Press Finding the Face of Asian New York]
* [http://www.geocities.com/realuyo/filipinas.htm Filipinas Cover Story 2000]
* [http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bino_a_realuyo The Nation]
* [http://theliteraryreview.org/phil/ Editor, The Literary Review Filipino/Filipino-American Edition 2000]
* [http://www.theliteraryreview.org/Featured_P&W/Bino_Realuyo/ The Literary Review/WebdelSol Web Chapbook 1998]