BARBARA JANE REYES was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Reyes is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo Poetry, Tinfish, Versal, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), Eros Pinoy (Anvil, 2001), InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent (Study Center Press, 2003), Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Coloring Book (Rattlecat, 2003), Not Home But Here (Anvil, 2003), Pinoy Poetics (Meritage, 2004), Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area (Avalon Publishing, 2004), 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905 (University of the Philippines Press, 2004), The Lambda Award finalist Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp, 2005), Graphic Poetry (Victionary, 2005), The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (Meritage, 2005). She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, the poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA. For more information on Barbara, please visit her site at www.barbarajanereyes.com.

MC CANLAS is known in the Bay Area Filipino community as a curator. That role bridges Canlas’s early work in the Philippines as a university professor, academic historian, and political activist in the democracy movement with his achievements in California as a community leader, youth worker, newspaper columnist, and service provider. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the San Francisco Foundation’s Daniel Koshland Civic Unity Award in 1999.

Canlas came to the United States reluctantly in 1984 to join his extended family. “I didn’t want to work in America or live in America. I saw myself as working for the Filipino people,” says Canlas. “I grew up in a rural province and listened from an early age to stories about our people. In college, I was supposed to be studying physics and chemistry, but I always found myself reading old newspapers in the history section of the newspaper. History is not something I read. It’s a way of life.” To reconcile the distance between himself and his homeland, Canlas continues to work within the Filipino community, serving as a bridge to mainstream America, as well as to the Filipino past. “You can’t repeat the past, but you can retell it. You can provide new narratives,” he says. To help Filipinos reclaim their history, he points out little-known facts about San Francisco landmarks, such as, for example, the Dewey Memorial Monument in Union Square was erected to commemorate the annexation of the Philippines by the United States in 1898. But even when working as a community advocate, Canlas’s knowledge of Filipino culture and history imbues his work: When he was called upon in the 1990s to work as a gang specialist, he devoted himself to studying why youth were joining gangs.

ORVY JUNDIS is a Philippine Komiks historian, writer and collector.

His book, Pilipino Martial Arts, contains warrior terminology, personalitites, historical tidbits and factual fragments that the reader can use as a bridge to have a better understanding of the fascinating world of Philippine warrior ways. Orvy Jundis is a lineage of several warrior arts. He continues to teach and write about the arts, traditions, and histories in his quest to preserve them for posterity.

FLORANTE AGUILAR is a critically-acclaimed classical guitarist and is considered one of the leading proponents of Philippine harana music in America today. He is comfortable playing traditional western classical music as a virtuoso and also ventures into contemporary music and other genres with ease. But his true love and affinity belongs to the music he grew up with in the Philippines - the music of a bygone era called the harana.

Born in Manila, Florante grew up in Cavite province where he learned to play the octavina in a rondalla group. At an early age, he picked up the guitar by way of rock and roll and by sixteen was enrolled at the University of the Philippines College of Music where he was trained as a classical musician. In 1985, Florante toured Europe, United States and Asia for 6 1/2 months performing in major cities both as a soloist and ensemble player.

Later, he moved to New York under a scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music with Sharon Isbin, Grammy Award winner and current guitar department chair of the Juilliard School. Florante also studied with internationally-recognized Filipino guitarist Michael Dadap and has performed in masterclasses of guitar luminaries such as David Russell, Manuel Barrueco, David Starobin, Frederic Hand and Benjamin Verdery.

Florante later accepted a position with the pioneering Buffalo Guitar Quartet where he toured and recorded the critically acclaimed CD New Music for Four Guitars (New World 384-2). Florante received his Bachelor of Music Degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1996 under the tutelage of David Tanenbaum. For more information, visit his website at www.florante.org.