Around six years ago, Lakan Umali was featured in the fourth anniversary issue of Scout Magazine, alongside the likes of artists Donny Pangilinan and UNIQUE, photographer JL Javier, and fashion designer RJ Santos, touted as “leaders of the new cool,” who “challenge convention in hopes of foreseeing a future unrestricted and unfiltered.” Asked about her main goal in life, Umali said “I just really want to teach until I can’t teach. I want to be able to participate in discussions.
I want to study history and literature until hopefully they find something I didn’t realize until they teach me. And to write also, of course.” Umali seems on track towards the fruition of these intentions, if not already there.
Then a substitute instructor at the University of the Philippines Mindanao, she now teaches literature and creative writing at UP Diliman, the state university’s main campus, where she also completed her bachelor’s degree in anthropology. Under her belt are recognitions at the 2017 Maningning Miclat Awards and at the inaugural Kokoy F. Guevara Poetry Competition, including publications in SOFTBLOW, Kritika Kultura, Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 10, and Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature.
Umali’s penchant for history and the letters finds another vessel in The Ferdinand Project , her soon-to-debut novel, which copped the Grand Prize, in her first try, at this year’s Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. The co.
