Exciting news!

The Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices (AILAP) is working with #RomanceClass to bring you the 21st Ateneo National Writers Workshop (21ANWW)! This year, AILAP aims to explore romance writing that challenges current conventions, as well as contribute to the direction and future of the genre.

This is amazing to me in many different levels, but mainly because as a young aspiring writer who had an inclination toward writing love stories, I was never encouraged to write romance by the academe. Perhaps it was not conveyed directly to me that the romance genre wasn’t welcome in the literary sphere, but the way literature was being taught at the time and the type of short stories and poetry that the school’s publication put out made it seem so. To have an actual academic entity promote the exploration of the romance genre is refreshing to me, and I am looking forward to the stories we’re going to be seeing through this program.