Philippine English fiction writer Greg Brillantes died at the age of 92 on a Friday, the last weekend of September, as a severe tropical storm was heading straight to the central islands of the archipelago.
His second daughter, Cecilia, perhaps named after the patron saint of music, was surely coming home after many years based stateside.
“Chi,” as she was called, was one of my students in English I at UP Manila four decades ago. She was part of a memorable, rowdy block of occupational therapy majors. Her father, often mentioned in class, was the renowned author of Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro. That story, a staple in college syllabi introducing students to literature, tells the tale of a country doctor who learns a vital lesson about faith from his own son.
It wasn’t until after the first EDSA revolution that I got to work closely with Greg B., as he had once written his name in my pocket directory (***9507). He was an editorial consultant for Midweek magazine for six years, and I was among the staff writers. Of course, I’d read more of his work, aside from the aforementioned piece. There was The Distance to Andromeda, which made you never look at the night sky the same way again. And The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957, an ode to adolescence in the province of Tarlac, although written in prose.
Greg also edited The Manila Review, a martial law era literary journal that came out more or less quarterly, where I first read Erwin Castillo’s The Watch of La Diane, as well as a sheaf of poems by the teenage poet Diana Gamalinda, who drowned in Vigan in 1978. The Review was also where I saw mind-blowing illustrations by the likes of…
The two-day festival transferred to downtown Loudonville on Saturday. Credit: Hayden Gray 
