About the author
News from Radyo Natin Virac, November 26, 2022 – Nap Arcilla was among three writers from Catanduanes who took home national honors in Literature. His book, Maqueda (Mga Usipon Mula Lawod Haggag Baybayon), his first, is a collection of short stories about the sea adventures in Catanduanes. It was awarded the best first book at the 22nd Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award. Before this honor, it was also nominated for the Best Book in Filipino Fiction of the 39th National Book Award by the National Book Development Board of the Philippines and Manila Critic Circle. He also won the first Gawad Kataga sa Pagsulat ng Dagli award and a Fiction Fellow of the 2021 UP National Writers Workshop. Arcilla is Principal at Bislig Elementary School in Virac, Catanduanes.
The other award recipients were Emmanuel T. Barrameda who won the First Bienvenido Award for his essay “Pihit” and Paul John C. Padilla for his poem “Ang Parahagot.” Barrameda teaches at Catanduanes National High School Senior High; while Padilla teaches at Virac Pilot Elementary School.
Read the Maqueda book reviews here written by Niles Jordan D. Breis and Victor Dennis Tino Nierva.
Fiction as gritty, as density
A Flash Review by Niles Jordan D. Breis (April 8, 2021)
Something is glaringly remarkable in Nap Arcilla’s “Maqueda”: the sea at hand situates itself as one fictive expanse yet all the stories in here are gritty, indelibly. The resolve is partly in the cadence and the latter almost resides between wanton neglect and calculated noise. Simply put, the author is unapologetically irreverent, in many aspects.
Said irreverence is likewise relative when viewed, say, within the author’s hardly comforting prose of the ravaged self. In this impressive debut, after all, density assumes another meaning beyond water or island– the weight of all things luminous in the presence of seeking that which blur between smoke and mirrors. Undeniably, we have in here a rare find by virtue, at least, of his being an entrancing tale teller from the island-province of Catanduanes. He is an arguably real talent to watch, like it or not.
With a mix of the gritty and the dense, Arcilla’s fiction may be deemed as torsional–that is, to read him is to be in for a certain twisting, bodily or its opposite. The complexity of being torsional is that the twisting itself may be at once violent and liberating. Like when a boat runs aground and is now at rest while your head still reels off iterated images of drowning.
“Maqueda” by Nap Arcilla
A review by Victor Dennis Tino Nierva (August 8, 2020)
In the Philippines, if your surname is Arcilla, you will immediately think that you are from Catanduanes. You are an islander.
I would hate to begin revealing this concept. I can prioritize the entitlement I get in designing Nap Arcilla’s book. I’m the first to see, because I’m the one making, what his book looks like. I determine how far or close to the chest of the reader he will read. But nope. At the end of designing, I found the book complete before even sending me his manuscript. The revelation of Nap’s last name was inseparable from the stories in her first book, “Maqueda.” “
Substitute, considering the most appropriate term for my description of Nap’s entire book. I tend to underrepresent ‘what’ is ‘Maqueda’ in my cover design. Calm and calm is my mind’s face—dazzling and rough texture of the stories. Here I wanted the cover to contradict the usefulness of the book. I welcomed the waves of Nap’s unquestionable bravery. She let me design, well, she suffered.
With theology. The islands after the colony. That time when we look at the island with amazement we feel stupid. It’s clear in Nap’s stories—whether you’re on the island or not, whether you know it or not, it’s best to be on the ocean imposing. There’s freedom of speech, no sanctification, non-biased, accurate, and contradictory—be it in the island it grew up in and in the narrow channel it’s been sprinkled. What’s funny is Nap didn’t dive into Maqueda, that probably wasn’t his intention. Because he doesn’t need it anymore to tell the story that needs to be told in a way that makes him most comfortable. Although I think, he can’t be assumed when thinking about this collection because he will risk bestowing us with a very thick chapter.
It’s been a secret itch of my brain to study the ‘people’ in the Bicol region for years. Few can read about this, if any, just a taste of researches about other island regions of the Philippines. In “Maqueda’s own way,” it shares some alphabets of understanding that I can relate to. It’s just a vocabulary of liberation, but it’s already a boundary. What else would the daily experiences be? How else is language (with no objections played with and sharpened in this book)?
In “Maqueda,” Nap gives us an up-close, quirky peek into the nesology of his origins. But he’s also a moth child of Maqueda. He leads us not on a cruise but to walk upon the water so that even sailing may be more understood—or otherwise lose our understanding of it.
Congrats to you, Nap, and a spectacular walk on the waters of Maqueda! Thanks. We continue to cherish this delicacy in your 202-page offering.
(Editor’s note: Vic Nierva designed the book cover of Maqueda. The book is published by Isang Balangay Media Productions.)