BA English - Creative Writing, UP Mindanao

𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐘, 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐘! 🇵🇭🎭

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘯?

A sharp mind? 🧠 A charming smile? 😁 A flawless performance? 🎭 Or the ability to survive a room where everyone is willing to fight for the same dream? 🌟

As pressure tightens and tensions slowly unfold, hidden motives begin to surface. Beneath professionalism lies fear. Beneath confidence lies uncertainty. And beneath every polished answer is a person silently asking: “𝘼𝙢 𝙄 𝙚𝙣𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝?” 👀

Join the sophomore students of BA English (Creative Writing) as they bring to the stage a story of ambition, competition, and the haunting desire to finally hear the words: “𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱!” 🌟

🌟 𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐁𝐈𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐑 🌟
🗓 May 26, 2026
🕔 5:00 PM
📍 UP Mindanao Mini Theatre

Because in a world where everyone wants to be seen, only one applicant will receive the call. ☎️

Join us on May 22, 2026, 6 PM at the CHSS Mini Theatre as the BA English (Creative Writing) seniors bring their thesis works to life through performances, interpretations, and artistic presentations for UN/TETHERED: SINEWS 2026!

/tethered

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍: 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐖𝐒 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 — 𝐔𝐍/𝐓𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 🔮

After years of navigating their destinies within the BA English (Creative Writing) program, this year’s 𝟏𝟏 𝐁𝐀𝐄 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬 are ready to present what their cards have in store for them. 🃏

Be prepared to witness talent, artistry, and passion for the arts like no other. Don’t worry—you won’t need divine intervention to become a witness to their miracles. Just be there on 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟐, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔, 𝟔 𝐏𝐌, 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐇𝐒𝐒 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐞 and you’ll never know, the cards might say something about you too. 👁️

𝘜𝘕/𝘛𝘌𝘛𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌𝘋: 𝘚𝘐𝘕𝘌𝘞𝘚 2026 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘈 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 (𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘞𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨) 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.

/tethered

IN PHOTOS | Last 11–13 May 2026, five ARTS 1 classes under the BA English Creative Writing faculty participated in the Pinta, Tinta, Palabas II: May Arts Fest 2026.

From curated exhibits and zine catalogs to interactive booths and lecture-workshops, the Arts Fest became a space that foregrounded the ways art continues to function as a practice of storytelling and collaboration, showcasing the creativity, criticality, and collective energies of this semester’s ARTS 1 students.

We extend our gratitude to filmmaker and director Arden Rod Condez for sharing his expertise during the lecture-workshops “Independent Filmmaking in the Philippines” and “From Drama to Screenplay.” Through conversations on screenwriting, independent cinema, and storytelling grounded in local histories and social realities, the sessions emphasized the transformative potential of art and film that engage with culture and community.

Congratulations as well to the winners of this year’s Arts Fest:

BEST BOOTH CONCEPT: Section B2
BEST CURATED ARTWORK: “Dianasaurus,” Section K Group 3
BEST ZINE CATALOG: “Epitome,” Section E1, Group 4

Thank you to the UP Literary Society, Aklat Alamid, all the students, faculty members, performers, and guests who helped make this semester’s Arts Fest possible.

LOOK | BA English (Creative Writing) Faculty Member Mx. Carissa Natalia Baconguis’s debut chapbook, Sacred and Perishable (Nine Syllables Press, 2025), is featured in Ms. Magazine’s "Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026” written and curated by Karla J. Strand and Violet Pandya.

Strand and Pandya focus Baconguis’s poetry collection into three words: "Rupture, Embodiment, Erosion.”

Ms. Magazine, originally published as a “one-shot” sample insert in New York magazine in December 1971, became the first national magazine to make feminist voices audible, feminist journalism tenable, and a feminist worldview available to the public. Today, Ms. remains the most trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online, wholly owned by the Feminist Majority Foundation. This year, Baconguis, alongside other poets, is highlighted by the magazine as an exciting and extraordinary poetry title which aligns with Ms. Magazine's mission to amplify stories of the creation, access, use and preservation of knowledge by women and girls around the world.

Sacred and Perishable (2025) is available internationally at Nine Syllables Press, Smith College Massachusetts, and Amazon, and locally at Everything’s Fine PH, Makati City.

LINK: https://msmagazine.com/2026/04/24/best-feminist-poetry-women-writers/

Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026 Happy April, and Happy National Poetry Month. Since my dormant love of poetry was reignited, I’ve found it so refreshing and inspiring to read beautiful collections each year and share them with you. In 2021, I tried something a bit different with the poetry list: Instead of the usual blurb, I foc...

𝐁𝐀𝐄 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞! 🥳

Some campus weeks pass quietly. This one arrives carrying stories, colors, conversations, and the kind of creative energy that turns ordinary hallways into living spaces for art. BAE Week 2026, in collaboration with Arts Festival 2026, gathers the UP Mindanao creative community into a celebration where literature, film, visual art, and shared expression meet in one space.

For a few days, the campus becomes a place of exchanged pages, lingering glances at artworks, late conversations, and voices unafraid to create. Whether you come to write, watch, read, perform, or simply feel the warmth of being surrounded by people who love art, there is always a corner waiting for you here. ✨

📅 May 11–15, 2026
📍 UP Mindanao

Featuring:
🎨 ARTS 1 Exhibit — UP Mindanao Atrium
🎬 Lecture-Workshops by Arden Rod Condez — CHSS AVR
📚 Book Pantry & Online Engagement Activities

POSITION PAPER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES UP MINDANAO ON THE PROPOSED "REFRAMED GENERAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM" OF THE COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION (CHED)

The Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines Mindanao expresses its strong opposition to the proposed “Reframed General Education Curriculum Component” currently being advanced by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). While the proposal is framed through the language of “responsiveness”, “flexibility”, and “global competitiveness”, what it primarily advances is a narrow and deeply neoliberal vision of education that reduces General Education (GE) into an instrument of technocratic standardization and labor-market adaptation.

At the core of the proposal is the reduction of the General Education Curriculum to eighteen (18) units, with the humanities displaced from the core of undergraduate education. Courses that once allowed students to engage with philosophy, history, the arts, ethics, and Philippine society are either removed or subsumed under vague formulations such as “Professional Communication,” “Global Trends and Emerging Technologies,” and “Data, Evidence, and Ethics in a Knowledge Society.”

Throughout the proposal, education is repeatedly justified through the demands of industry and performance indicators. Students are imagined mainly as future workers who must be trained to adapt to technological change and the demands of the labor market. Education is “reframed” not as a public good oriented toward critical thinking and social transformation, but mainly as a mechanism for producing compliant and technologically adaptable labor for the global market.

This orientation fundamentally misunderstands the role of General Education. General Education is the foundation through which students learn to interrogate systems of power, engage historical memory, cultivate empathy, and imagine more just social futures. The humanities are indispensable precisely because they develop forms of critical consciousness that cannot be reduced to technical competencies or market viability.

Furthermore, this proposed reduction of GE units must also be situated within the structural crisis in Philippine education. The claim that GE courses merely duplicate Senior High School content oversimplifies the problem and obscures the uneven realities of educational access and quality across the country. The deficiencies of basic education cannot be resolved by further diminishing higher education’s capacity for critical formation.

The proposed curriculum also risks exacerbating the existing inequalities between students from privileged educational backgrounds and those from underserved regions and public schools. For many Filipino students, particularly those from marginalized communities, General Education courses serve as crucial spaces for intellectual exposure and critical literacy. Compressing these into an eighteen-unit curriculum thus disproportionately disadvantages students who rely on the university as a site of transformative learning instead of merely credential acquisition.

Moreover, the repeated emphasis on “responsible AI”, “digital literacy”, and “global trends” throughout the document reflects an uncritical embrace of technological solutionism. While technological literacy is undeniably important, it cannot substitute for historical consciousness, ethical reflection, and cultural understanding. Technologies emerge within structures of power and are shaped by histories of labor, extraction, surveillance, and inequality. Without the humanities, students may learn how to use technology without ever being taught how to question the conditions under which such technologies emerge and operate.

As faculty members committed to the public mission of the national university, we reject the notion that education should be subordinated to the changing demands of the market. Universities must remain spaces where students are taught not only how to adapt to the world as it is, but how to critically imagine what it can become.

We therefore call on CHED to:

1. Reject the reduction of General Education curriculum to eighteen (18) units.
2. Conduct genuine consultations with academic communities across disciplines.
3. Uphold the role of universities as spaces for ethical reflection and critical inquiry.
4. Recognize education as a public good directed toward democratic participation and social transformation instead of labor-market production.

We also call on other colleges, academic programs, and the UP Mindanao administration to take a firm stand and oppose the Reframed GE curriculum. As educators and in the context of Mindanao, no less, we uphold forms of knowledge closely tied to democracy and cultural memory. Therefore, we must oppose all forms of attempts to diminish spaces that promote the development and criticality of discourses on identity, historical marginalization, right to self-determination, peace, and conflict, among others. Humanities, particularly in the context of the regions, promote critical frameworks for engagement and understanding. Thus, a GE reform in this context must primarily be based on the materiality of the communities and not disconnect from it.

At stake in this proposed GE reform is the very meaning of higher education itself.

We, therefore, reaffirm our position that the university and institutions of higher learning must continue to serve as a space where students learn how to think critically, act ethically, and participate meaningfully in a democratic life. At a time when the Philippines urgently needs critically and socially engaged citizens, reducing the humanities in General Education only moves us in precisely the opposite direction.

Department of Humanities
UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES MINDANAO

Pinta Tinta Palabas II is open for all!

Support our students and local artists by joining us for three days of art, performance, and creative exchange.

DAY 1
Opening of the exhibit (Atrium), 12 PM

DAY 2
Opening remarks (Atrium), 10 AM
Performances and open mic (Atrium)
LUNCH BREAK
Lecture-workshop: Independent filmmaking in the Philippines (AVR), 1 PM

DAY 3
Lecture-workshop: Drama to screenplay (AVR), 1 PM

See you there!

Meet our speaker for Pinta Tinta Palabas II!

Arden Rod Condez is a filmmaker from Pandan, Antique. His debut feature, 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯 𝘋𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨, won Best Film at the 15th Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and became the first Filipino film to have a commercial theatrical run in South Korea.

Condez also wrote and directed 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘺, the 2022 Gawad Urian Best Short Film, and penned Sonny Calvento’s 𝘌𝘹𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘔𝘦, 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴, 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴, 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴—the first Filipino short film selected for Sundance.

During his term at UP Visayas-Iloilo, he guided his students in creating 18 short films for their Bagong Sibol showcase, many of which screened at local and international festivals.

As a producer, his credits include Calvento’s 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳, Dayoc’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵, Soriaso’s 𝘈 𝘊𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭, and Torato’s 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘣𝘰, 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘢 𝘉𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯. In 2024, he produced two Cinemalaya entries: Jonathan Jurilla’s 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 (now on Netflix) and Richard Salvadico and Kat Sumagaysay-Salvadico’s 𝘛𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘬, which won Best Film and also the most awarded work at the 48th Gawad Urian Awards.

May Arts Festival ba? 👀
Oo, Teh! Sa May 11-13 na! 🤩

Pinta Tinta Palabas is back for the second semester of AY 2025-2026!

Check out the works of ARTS 1 sections B2, E1, E2, K, and N at the UP Mindanao Atrium and join us at the CHSS AVR for a 2-day lecture-workshop with the Antiqueño filmmaker Arden Rod Condez. 🎬

Stay tuned for updates!

May something this May. 👀
Abangan.

LOOK | BAE faculty members Prof. Jhoanna Lynn Cruz, PhD and Mr. Liane Carlo Suelan presented their papers at the 3rd Philippine Q***r Studies Conference, held on 24–26 April 2026 at University of the Philippines Diliman.

Prof. Cruz presented her paper, “Framing Le***an Narratives for Advocacy: An Analysis of the Podcasts TITATIBX and Narratibs,” contributing to ongoing conversations on q***r representation and its political articulations through contemporary media.

Mr. Suelan presented “Q***r Manghod and Kuya-Figure in Original Short Fiction,” foregrounding q***r relationalities and dynamics within literary narratives.

Both papers contribute to ongoing conversations on q***r representation, relationality, and critical engagement across literary and media forms.