Jollibee Cap Off To Barbara Jane!

So, let me be honest.

It's not the easiest thing on the ego (or, okay, maybe this is just me) to meet a beautiful and wickedly gifted Pinay writer. The simple truth is that insecurity and jealousy can play some nasty, dirty little tricks. But the beautiful and wickedly gifted Barbara Jane Reyes ain't having that. What I'm trying to say—and making a mess of it, I might add—is that there are many reasons why I am pleased to call bj my friend, the main one being that we were able to become friends at all. So it's with much, much happiness (and the goofiest grin on my face) that I help spread the word:

Barbara Jane Reyes has been selected as the recipient of the 2005 James Laughlin Award for her second collection of poems, Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press). The James Laughlin Award is given to commend and support a poet’s second book of poetry. The award was established by a gift to the Academy from the Drue Heinz Trust in honor of the poet and publisher James Laughlin (1914–1997). Ms. Reyes will receive a cash prize of $5,000, and the Academy will purchase copies of Poeta en San Francisco for distribution to its members. This year’s judges were James Longenbach, Mary Jo Bang, and Elizabeth Alexander.

Her work was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appears or is forthcoming in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Interlope, Nocturnes (Re)view, North American Review, Tinfish, Versal, in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), Eros Pinoy(Anvil, 2001), Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Not Home But Here(Anvil, 2003), Pinoy Poetics(Meritage, 2004), and forthcoming in Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts(Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 2005), and Graphic Poetry(Hong Kong: Victionary, 2005). Her first book, Gravities of Center, was published by Arkipelago Books (San Francisco) in 2003.

From the judge’s citation for the James Laughlin Award:

“If William Blake were alive and well and sitting on a eucalyptus branch in the hills above the bay, this is the poetry he would aspire to write.” —James Longenbach