Criselda Yabes has mostly written books on the military and Mindanao, subjects she had gathered while working as a journalist for major international news organizations. Her first novel set in Sulu, Below the Crying Mountain, won the UP Centennial Literary Prize in 2008 and was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010. She currently lives in Manila after a one-year writing grant at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. She was born in Quezon City, raised in Zamboanga, and has lived in Paris, France.
