This work was funded by the UP System Enhanced Creative Work and Research Grant (ECWRG 2019-001_R). Many thanks to the writers who participated during the UP Cebu Creative Writing Program’s Pundok Katitikan Forum in 2018; Patricia Candaza and Stacey Baladya for their research assistance during the data gathering; and to Candice Alcarez for her technical assistance for the data visualization.
-Prof. Arong
Abstract
This article examines the logic of the Philippine literary publishing industry. Similar to other formerly colonized nations, the country’s publishing industry is controlled by a few publishers based in the capital, Metro Manila, resulting in the marginalization of regional writing. Authors outside the borders of the metropolitan space experience an intellectual dependency on the Manila-centric publishing industry. This article, thus, seeks to analyze the consequences of this dependency on the publishing trends in regional writing, using Cebuano literature as case study.