By Carla Adeline Via
Amid recent boycott campaigns against the 2025 Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM), the Philippine delegates negotiated terms with local organizers to feature pro-Gaza literary works, according to Silliman University (SU) Asst. Prof. Ian Rosales Casocot.
Casocot, a Dumaguete fictionist joining the international book fair, shared that Filipino writers’ attendance is “contingent” on their demands to the organizers.
“They demanded a series of activities [and] projects like anthologies with pro-Gaza writers, and the Philippines readily agreed to all their demands,” he said.
These include holding a round-the-clock poetry reading during the fair, featuring pieces on peace, justice, and freedom written by local writers.
Casocot added that their delegation is backed by a signed Memorandum of Agreement and massive financial investments.
The event is funded through a multi-agency collaboration of the National Book Development Board (NDMB), the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCAA), the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the office of Senator Loren Legarda.
“They already invested so much money into this and it will probably be a huge blow to the Philippine publishing—I’m not sure how—if we back out, having been committed to it a few years ago already, even before the boycott already came out,” he said.
In 2023, the boycott gained international attention after the postponement of the LiBeraturpreis Award ceremony scheduled for the FBM which was supposed to honor Palestinian author Adania Shibli amid the Hamas attacks on Israel that year.
Guest of honorship
Meanwhile, the Philippines’ participation in the FBM on Oct. 15 to 19 marks its first guest of honorship, a second feat for Southeast Asia following Indonesia last 2015.
Casocot explained that the country had been “clamoring to become the Guest of Honor” for years as it is a position given only to one country annually.
“When the Philippines got the invitation to become [its] guest of honor, the NDMB [and] the NCAA jumped on the opportunity because this very rarely happens,” Casocot said.
He also shared that the country’s bid for a guest of honorship was an “ongoing process” long before the call for boycott began last year.
“The boycott only happened starting last year, but this particular application by the Philippines was a long time in coming,” he said.
PH delegation
Casocot will be joined by SU alumna and poets Merlie Alunan and Marjorie Evasco, who are among the 500-member Philippine delegation composed of writers, creatives, publishers, and literary organizations.
The delegation bears their motto, “The imagination peoples the air,” which is inspired by a line from Jose Rizal’s “Noli Mi Tangere” that speaks about the “universality of storytelling.”
Casocot shared that he will be reading a piece by Dumaguete-based Pakistani writer Mohammed Malik titled “City of Dreams.”
The short fiction piece is about an invasion in a city filled with libraries, bookshops, and hopeful children which serves a parallel to the current onslaught between Israel and Palestine.
“The delegation has the opportunity to do what the organizers of the FBM have failed to do: speak up in support of Palestinian writers and condemn Israel’s systematic destruction,” Malik said, when asked about the recent boycott campaign.
The FBM is the largest and oldest international trade fair for publishing various forms of written media such as novels, children’s books, and scientific databases.
