Celebrating Translations of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s Fiction — Oct 17 FBM25

P R E S S   R E L E A SE 

PALH

3030 18^th Street

San­ta Mon­i­ca, CA 90405, USA

Email: palhbooks@gmail.com

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CELEBRATE CECILIA MANGUERRA BRAINARD TRANSLATIONS AT FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Six inter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ers will gath­er at the Frank­furt Book Fair on Octo­ber 17, 2025 to cel­e­brate for­eign trans­la­tions of fic­tion by the award-win­ning Fil­ipino author Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard.

“Cel­e­brat­ing Trans­la­tions of Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Fic­tion” will also pro­vide a forum for these not­ed pub­lish­ers to share their pub­lish­ing exper­tise to the audi­ence. The event is one of the many pro­grams pre­sent­ed by the Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Cul­ture and the Arts and Nation­al Book Devel­op­ment Board where the Philip­pines is the Guest of Hon­our coun­try at the 77^th Frank­furt Book Fair 2025.

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is the author and edi­tor of over 20 books, includ­ing her Select­ed Short Sto­ries and her nov­els: When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, Mag­dale­na, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow. A lead­ing fic­tion­ist in the Philip­pines, many of Brainard’s sto­ries explore his­tor­i­cal events in the Philip­pines, memo­ri­al­iz­ing how the Fil­ipino peo­ple have endured its tur­bu­lent his­to­ry with resilience and human­i­ty. Brainard’s work has been trans­lat­ed into 14 languages.

Cecilia’s lit­er­ary agent who also trans­lat­ed and edit­ed her nov­el, The News­pa­per Wid­ow (for Super založ­ba), will lead the talks. Sen­ja Požar, founder of Ljubl­jana Book Acad­e­my, has near­ly 30 years pub­lish­ing expe­ri­ence, hold­ing roles as edi­tor, edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor, and edi­tor-in-chief for fic­tion, non-fic­tion, text­books, ref­er­ence works, edu­ca­tion books, and mag­a­zines. Since 2016 she advanced inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion for Mladin­s­ka knji­ga and Cankar­je­va založ­ba, work­ing on Frank­furt 2023 and Bologna 2024 GOH. She lat­er launched the Acad­e­my, became edi­tor-in-chief, rep­re­sents IRCAI under UNESCO, and since 2020 has been part of Pub­lish­ers With­out Borders.

From Skop­je, North Mace­do­nia, Fil­ip Batkos­ki trans­lat­ed Brainard’s nov­els, Mag­dale­na and The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Batkos­ki has been work­ing in the pub­lish­ing indus­try since 2011 as the man­ag­er of Bata Press, a fam­i­ly-run pub­lish­ing house found­ed by his father, Nenad Batkos­ki. Under his lead­er­ship, Bata Press has devel­oped into a respect­ed name in Mace­don­ian pub­lish­ing, known for its ded­i­ca­tion to lit­er­a­ture and its sup­port of local and inter­na­tion­al authors. Com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing Mace­don­ian lit­er­a­ture and build­ing cross-cul­tur­al con­nec­tions, Fil­ip con­tin­ues to lead Bata Press with pas­sion and vision.

Pub­lish­er Leonar­do Garzaro, who hails from Sao Paulo, Brazil, pub­lished Brainard’s Select­ed Short Sto­ries and her nov­el When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, under the imprint of his pub­lish­ing house Edi­tor Rua du Sabao. Leonar­do Gar­zoro, who is a writer him­self, has pub­lished dozens of books, includ­ing his recent nov­el, the Guardian of Names, which was pub­lished in four coun­tries and was nom­i­nat­ed for the Jabut Award for Lit­er­a­ture. He cur­rent­ly writes for two of Brazil’s largest news­pa­pers. He is also a Brazil­ian lit­er­a­ture con­sul­tant for the pub­lish­ers in Argenti­na, Mex­i­co; Ecuador, and the Turk­ish agency Introtema.

Cairo-based Mohamed Radi trans­lat­ed Brainard’s three nov­els into Ara­bic under the imprint of the Egypt­ian Office for Pub­lish­ing and Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Pub­li­ca­tions. Radi is the Direc­tor and Founder of the inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing house that has pro­duced more than 1,000 titles by lead­ing Arab authors and writ­ers. It has trans­lat­ed more than 200 titles from var­i­ous lan­guages. Mohamed is vice-pres­i­dent of the African Pub­lish­ers Net­work. He has worked in pub­lic ser­vice as an elect­ed board mem­ber, held sev­er­al posi­tions as Chair­man of the Media Com­mit­tee of the Egypt­ian pub­lish­ers and Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Egypt­ian Pub­lish­ers Association.

Dejan Tra­jkos­ki, from North Mace­do­nia, is a pub­lish­er, writer, poet, and edi­tor. He is the founder and direc­tor of the pub­lish­ing house Prozart Media, the Inter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val PRO-ZA Balkan, and the Skop­je Fel­low­ship Program—the first pub­lish­ing fel­low­ship in East­ern Europe (and the only one in the region until 2021), estab­lished in 2013. His philo­soph­i­cal nov­el Infi­deli­ty has been trans­lat­ed into nine lan­guages, includ­ing Eng­lish, Ger­man, and Turk­ish. He pub­lished trans­la­tions Cecilia’s When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept and her Select­ed Short Sto­ries.

From Athens, Dim­itris Tsoukatos, heads Lemvos Edi­tions which pub­lished Cecilia’s nov­el Mag­dale­na. With a strong back­ground in finance, Dim­itris has led the pub­lish­ing house since 2015 to pub­lish qual­i­ty works from young Greek writ­ers and it also trans­lates impor­tant works of world literature.

Pub­lish­ers who were unable to attend sent messages.

Dr. Takuya Masu­da, who trans­lat­ed Cecilia’s World War II nov­el When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept for Gen­ki Shobou in Tokyo wrote:

“I trans­lat­ed Ms. Brainard’s When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept into Japan­ese because I want­ed read­ers in Japan to read and feel this pow­er­ful sto­ry of war, mem­o­ry, and resilience in their own lan­guage. In doing so, I hoped to cre­ate a bridge between the Philip­pines and Japan, two coun­tries with inter­twined his­to­ries, so that read­ers may reflect not only on the trau­mas of the past but also on the pos­si­bil­i­ties of empa­thy and heal­ing. I believe such reflec­tions are espe­cial­ly impor­tant in today’s world. My wish is that my trans­la­tion will help fos­ter deep­er cross-cul­tur­al dia­logue and under­stand­ing, and that Ms. Brainard’s mov­ing nar­ra­tive will con­tin­ue to inspire strength and hope in new readers.”

Jale Mamme­do­va from Qanun Pub­lish­ing House in Azer­bai­jan who trans­lat­ed Brainard’s When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept said:

“The theme of war, sad­ly, is not unfa­mil­iar to the Azer­bai­jani peo­ple; it is, rather, a wound that lies painful­ly close to the heart. Hav­ing endured two dev­as­tat­ing wars in the past thir­ty-five years, the sen­si­tive hearts of Azer­bai­jani read­ers will inevitably be pro­found­ly touched by this nov­el. No mat­ter how dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions and ways of life may be, there are times when nations sep­a­rat­ed by vast dis­tances are bound togeth­er by the same unspeak­able tragedies – and war is one such force that unites through sor­row. At the same time, the leg­ends and epics woven into the nov­el also feel strik­ing­ly famil­iar to Azer­bai­ja­nis… it is hard to label this nov­el as pure­ly nation­al; it is, in essence, uni­ver­sal, for the suf­fer­ings the author por­trays are ones that peo­ples across the world have inevitably expe­ri­enced, in dif­fer­ent eras and in count­less forms.”

The event will be held at the Pilip­inas Stage, Philip­pine Stand, Hall 5.1 A95 & B95, Frank­furt Book Fair, Octo­ber 17, at 10 a.m. Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Co-direc­tor of the Trans­la­tion Com­mit­tee of the Nation­al Book Devel­op­ment Board, will give the wel­come and clos­ing remarks.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact palhbooks@gmail.com.

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tags: #FBM25 #GOH2025 #imag­i­na­tion­Peo­plestheAir #PHLGOH2025

#book­sphilip­pines #Frank­furt­book­fair  #Frank­furter­buchmesse #Philip­pines­GuestofHo­nour