(Please consult with author before using this bio in any form. Email is at the end.)
Bino A. Realuyo was born and raised in Manila, the son of a survivor of the Bataan Death March and a World War II Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines. He is a poet and a novelist, an adult educator and a community activist. He is the author of the award winning books, The Umbrella Country, a novel and The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, a poetry collection.
His first novel, The Umbrella Country, was published by Ballantine’s Readers Circle, Random House in 1999. One of the nominees for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in 2000, it was also Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels of 1999 and a recipient of an Asian American “Member’s Choice” Literary Award. It received acclaim in the U.S. as well as the Philippines. The New York Times Book Review mentioned that Realuyo’s “lucid prose is unencumbered by sentimentality and hindsight” and that the novel lends “freshness to a setting both impoverished and alluring.” The San Francisco Chronicle cited, “The Umbrella Country is a significant contribution to Filipino American literature.” In the Philippines, the editor Jullie Yap Daza of The Manila Standard called the novel, “a dangerous book because it reveals the Filipino soul, tortured, tormented by poverty.”
His
first collection of poetry, The Gods We Worship Live Next
Door,” was
a recipient of the 2005 Agha Shahid Ali Prize for poetry and
was published by University
of Utah Press. Poems in this collection have previously
appeared in prestigious magazines in the U.S. such as The Kenyon
Review, Manoa, The Literary Review, New Letters and The Nation.
He was a recipient of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from Poetry
Society of America.
His first poems published in the Philippines were praised by the late
National Artist for Literature N.V.M Gonzalez as “the
most moving ones I have come across in years.” Gonzalez wrote
in a letter to the publication, “I am honored for being one of
his first readers, although for now, he is a continent, and an ocean
away.” Grace
Schulman, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College,
City University of New York and poetry editor of The Nation,
wrote: "Bino A. Realuyo has that rare gift of transforming modern horror
into art.
. . . The book is passionate without a trace of sentimentality, a compelling
account of destruction under a silent god."
Realuyo has
finished a novel-in-stories titled, The F.L.I.P Show,
about Filipinos on the east coast. He is at work on another novel and a
collection of
poetry. He has received a New York Foundation for the Arts
fellowship for fiction, a Van Lier Foundation fellowship for poetry,
Urban
Artist Grant for fiction, PEN Open Book award for non-fiction, Valparaiso
Foundation fellowship for fiction, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award
from Poetry
Society of America, and an Asian American “Member’s
Choice” Book
Award.
He works in the field of adult education, especializing in teaching the integration of computer technology and English as a Second Language to members of disenfranchised immigrant communities. He has also been on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University's international MFA program in Creative Writing since its inception. Realuyo has a degree in International Relations from the School of International Service at The American University in Washington, DC and Universidad Argentina de La Empresa in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a world traveller and enjoy living in other countries for extended periods. He is proficient in Filipino and Spanish and is currently studying Brazilian Portuguese.
Thank so much for visiting. I hope I am able to be of help. If there
is more I can do, please reach me at binoarealuyo@gmail.com. I would
also like to know if this information is helpful to you. This is my
initial attempt at information gathering.
It means so much to me that you have visited. Live in the most authentic way possible. Maraming Salamat. Good luck on your voyage.
Quick Links
Contact