Book of Summer Reading

On a rectangular table in the anvil publishing offices in pasig are strewn its latest titles, and bosswoman Karina Africa Bolasco is talking about the latest goings on in the publishing world, as well as in her own peripatetic, professional life. She has just arrived from a women’s studies tour in the United States, where she was the lone delegate from the Philippines in a party that tackled women’s issues during the month of March as the world over was celebrating similar concerns.

"It’s the first time I attended something like that," she admits, it was a departure from the usual bookfair, though this did not stop her from packing a few titles of women’s anthologies to give as samples to fellow delegates

She’s been in the business for 25 years now, at Anvil for the past 15. Anvil has won six Publisher of the Year awards from the Manila Critics Circle, no mean feat considering it is perhaps the most won by any publishing outfit since the MCC handed out National Book Awards in the early 1980s

"Jessica Zafra’s Twisted 7 we just launched, and also Danton’s (Remoto) latest. They are among our bestsellers," Bolasco says, noting that Zafra’s Twisted book is the last because the column no longer comes out in the now defunct Today. Remoto’s latest, on the other hand, is written in Pinoy friendly Filipino swardspeak, because the beauticians and beauty parlor attendants had previously complained of the author’s highbrow English

Bolasco says that what’s sorely needed is a more vibrant Asia-wide book trade, where translation rights can be worked out directly and not have to go through the United States and other northern countries

"We need fast translators," she says, as there are books that are of special interest to Asia and its mores, and it would facilitate the process of selection if, say, Nihongo or Mandarin were translated straight into Tagalog or English by a Philippine-based pool. "We can’t always rely on the US."

"We must remember that publishing is a profit-driven, commercial endeavor," she says, in pushing for the Asian bloc

One of Anvil’s ongoing projects is in conjunction with the Japan Foundation, which compiles papers on Asia as a community written by veteran writers, including Sylvia Mayuga and Arnold Azurin. A finished product is a volume on the ethnic Chinese way of doing business

Then there are the reprint rights, where 10 percent royalty is assured the author and $500 up front goes to the publisher. Such is the case in the book Lost Eden by Robin Hemley and America’s Boy by James Hamilton Paterson

But Bolasco also explains that reprint rights are two-way, since there are books by Anvil that foreign presses might want to run and include in their catalogue, in which a separate contract is drawn up. Sometimes reprint rights are traded, but separate books require separate contracts.

Anvil also has joint ventures such as those with Verso (Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson) and New York University Press (Vestiges of War, edited by Luis Francia and Angel Shaw)

An upcoming bookfair, Bolasco says, is in Kuala Lumpur, and this early, they are already laying the groundwork for the Congress of Southeast Asian Libraries which Manila will host next year. The congress is held every two years

She says Anvil currently has on the drawing board a book on the women’s movement on an international scale, since there appears to be a dearth of materials on this available locally. Likewise, there is a need for Muslim-centered literature, be it fiction, children’s stories, or sociological essays, the better to wipe out the stain of prejudice in most addled minds during times of contrived terror.

"Even in our textbooks, grabe ang stereotyping sa Muslims, where the most common perception is that Muslims have many wives," Bolasco says, adding that Anvil is also working to reprint the short stories of Ibrahim Jubaira

And while Anvil has discontinued its contemporary fiction and poetry series that won several awards from the MCC in the early to mid-90s, nevertheless they continue to come out with inspired choices: forthcoming is a collection of fiction from the expat Chinoy writer long unheard from, Paul Stephen Lim, that will hopefully feature more arrivals and less departures; short stories from NVM Gonzalez awardee Sarge Lacuesta; and Merlinda Bobis’ novel Banana Heart Season in conjunction with a publishing house in Australia where she is based

Of course, Pete Lacaba’s Edad Medya a couple of years back had an initial run of 2,000, one of the biggest ever for poetry. But this is more the exception than the rule

"It’s sad because we’ve had to give back the manuscripts to the authors when the board chose not to reprint them," Karina says of some of the long out-of-print contemporary fiction and poetry series, including Erwin Castillo’s Firewalkers, which the author pulled out and has since been reprinted by the University of the Philippines Press

Sadder too is the fire that hit the Anvil bodega in the mid-90s that now makes those books even rarer editions. "Most of what we have left are file copies," she says

She has told countless times of the fire that swept her girlhood neighborhood in Lipa, and how all she packed was a bag of books

"There were no bookstores in our place (in Batangas) then, so we relied on the traveling salesmen selling encyclopedias. Our first books in the house were the Book of Knowledge and the children’s classics," she says, the latter with the full-page colored illustration before the complete uninterrupted text

Karina’s love affair with books has largely been uninterrupted, because after a brief stint at the Department of Labor under Minister Blas Ople in the late 1970s upon graduating with a degree in literature from St. Scholastica’s, she has worked with the Ramos group since 1980. It was a former teacher at St. Scho, Asuncion David Maramba, who had recommended her to Ben Ramos, and for years she held office at the NBS Avenida overseeing textbook development, while just outside her window the construction of the LRT was in full swing

The seventh floor of the NBS Avenida was filled with books not yet released locally, and for her it was a version of paradise or some secret Eden. It’s closed now, not just the floor but the entire bookstore near the Avenue theater, just like the original Popular Bookstore a few blocks away on Doroteo Jose which has moved to Boy Scout rotonda in Quezon City

The job still remains exciting, because at least there’s variety as one gets to meet and work with all sorts of people–writers, artists, book designers–and read different manuscripts, from cookbooks to philosophy, from midlife crisis anthologies to the bread and butter textbook that needs constant updating

The Anvil office on Pioneer Street has on its walls and corridors the framed covers of most of its books through 15 years, and there seems to be no letup. It doesn’t matter if blocks away on the MRT commuters would rather be texting on their cellphones than reading pulp fiction. It doesn’t matter to Karina, who herself is at some kind of crossroads, 12 years a widow after 12 years of being married to the late Mario Bolasco, their three daughters now finished with school, as she continues to rewrite the book that is the art and business of selling books