Xavier University Press is presenting three books and launching its website on Feb 7 as part of the celebration of the Research and Social Outreach month of the university.
The books, Stories of Survival: The Accounts of Xavier Ecoville Sendong Survivors, Commitment to Excellence: The Xavier University Scholars’ Stories, and Abot, are the first of a series of publications planned for release in 2014.
“Our role is not only to publish research results and academic papers,” Mr. Evans I. Yonson, XU Press Director, said. “We also hope to realize our function in the promotion and development of the culture and arts in the city, in the region, and ambitious but possible, the entire Mindanao.”
Stories of Survival and Commitment to Excellence are being produced in collaboration with the students of Development Communication who recorded and recoded the stories. Abot, the binisaya term for ‘yield’, is the anthology of the short stories, essays and poems of Xavier University students and staff collected in the Festival of Ideas writing competition launched by XU Press last year.
“We want to provide a venue for local writers to get published,” Mr. Yonson said. “Writers can aspire to see their name in print. As they say, a poem is not a poem until it has an audience.”
Other books in the year-long lineup include novels and memoirs of Cagayan de Oro writers who are familiar names in the national literary circles but only for the first time will be published in their own city.
The activity will also be accompanied by the launching of the Kinaadman, a Journal of the Southern Philippines Volume No. 34, which XU Press also publishes annually. Dr Antonio Montalvan, II, chair of the NCCA committee on museums and a reputable historian, will be presenting a brief talk on the cartography of Cagayan de Oro before, one of the manuscripts in the journal.
Engr Dexter Lo of the XU Engineering Resource Center will then be presenting the possible effects of climate change on the city’s present geographic layout. This is also in line with the XU Press’ advocacy on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management.