ARASAHAS

Poems from the Tropics


NEWS

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77th Frankfurter Buchmesse
(15-19 October 2025)
details TBA

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Virtual reading & panel
TBA, 2025

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Dr. Jaya Jacobo presents Arasahas
at the 76th Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair)
in Germany, October 16-20, 2024

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Congratulations to Christian Jil Benitez & Jaya Jacobo!

ARASAHAS: POEMS FROM THE TROPICS (PAWA Press & Paloma Press, 2024),
translated by Christian Jil Benitez from Jaya Jacobo’s Filipino text Arasahas: Mga Tula
is Longlisted in the 2023-24 Dryden Competition
sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA)
and the British Centre for Literary Translation, the only longlisted Southeast Asian entry.

ARASAHAS: MGA TULA by Jaya Jacobo (Savage Mind Publishing House, 2023)
is a Finalist in the 42nd National Book Awards presented by
the National Book Development Board of the Philippines (NBDB)
and the Manila Critics Circle (MCC).

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

San Francisco, September 15, 2024—PAWA Press, in association with Paloma Press, is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of the U.S. edition of Arasahas: Poems from the Tropics, a decolonial and feminist interpretation of the lives of transgender and transsexual Filipino women, first published in Filipino by Savage Mind Publishing House in Bicol.

In Arasahas, poet and educator Jaya Jacobo writes of the tropics as both time and place, as well as a sensibility through which one may understand and come to terms with the world. Translated into English by Christian Jil Benitez, the poems in this collection intimate how being tropical not only conjures torridities, but more importantly, entitles one to tenderness.

This project is made possible with support from Savage Mind Publishing House, National Book Development Board of the Philippines (NBDB), National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda.

Copies of Arasahas: Poems from the Tropics will be available at the 7th Biennial Filipino American International Book Festival on October 12, 2024 at the San Francisco Public Library.