MANILA, Philippines — Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Philippine National Book Awards.
Every year the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle spotlight the best books written, designed, and published in the Philippines through the National Book Awards. This year, 213 books have been nominated across the 29 categories which include both literary and non-literary publications.
Edited by Padmapani L. Perez, Rehana Rossouw, Alexandra Walter, and Renato Redentor Constantino, Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis is listed as one of the five finalists in the literary category for anthologies. Harvest Moon, Agam Agenda’s second book, gathers the stories of those at the frontlines of the climate crisis.
The anthology brings a new vocabulary for speaking about the climate crisis, and aims to inspire hope by connecting us to our human experience on this planet. Photographers across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America were invited to send images that showed a place or space with people or traces of humanity in them, and the book veered away from typical imagery of the environment and disasters. Then writers around the world received a list of words and phrases that they were not allowed to use in their pieces, such as ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’.
As Harvest Moon editor and Agam Agenda lead strategist Padmapani L. Perez says, “The intention was to discourage the use of jargon and to steer away from tired ways of describing the state we’re in. You will not encounter the words ‘carbon footprint,’ ‘mitigation’, ‘finance’, or ‘neoliberal’ in this book.”
Altogether, the stories in Harvest Moon offer 30 photographs and over 30 poems, stories, and essays about the climate crisis, spanning 24 countries and 11 languages. Contributors include Shirley Campbell Barr, Vinai Dithajohn, Marjorie Evasco, Luisa A. Igloria, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Leonardo Padura, and Malebo Sephodi.
The National Book Awards aim to not only celebrate the writers and publishers in the country, but to also support local literature by spreading awareness on Philippine publishing and increase readership in various languages across the country.
The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced on May 13, 2023 at the Manila Metropolitan Theater.
Read more about the awards and browse the other nominations here.
