Chicas is available on Spotify and other podcast platforms
14/12/2025
Happy Holidays! Thank you to friends old and new who celebrated our 10th year with us. May 2026 bring us the strength, resolve, commitment, optimism, & brilliance of these revolutionary women!
Our 2026 wall calendar is now available on Shopee and soon in Room 5 at Chapterhouse. 💖🗓️🇵🇸
12/12/2025
“One of the reasons why we write is to clarify to ourselves why and how we think about the things we think about, and one of the reasons why we read is to clarify to ourselves why and how others think about the things they think about. This book is one of the many local efforts that offer historical, geographic, and cultural context to Palestine for Filipinos: one half is translations of Palestinian poetry into Filipino, the other is new work written by Filipinos in solidarity with Palestine. Translation makes the previously unreadable, unseen, and impenetrable more porous. Translation makes solidarity possible, but also inevitable.” - Adam David
Salamat, Rolling Stone Philippines for featuring ‘Pagkat Tayo Man ay May Sampaga: New Philippine Writing and Translation for a Free Palestine.
This year, many new literary releases reflected Filipino writers’ frustrations with an identity, a nation, and a world in flux
09/12/2025
Pasko! Paskzine! Pasko! Paskzine! Pasko na naman muli, kaya next week: BLTXMAS YEAR 16 NA!!!
Kitakits po at your favorite neighborhood small press expo Better Living Through Xeroxography on Dec 13, 12PM to 1PM may kaunting chikahan tungkol sa Palestine at Frankfurt Book Fair Boycott at 1PM to 9PM naman ang expo at trading, sa Sikat Studio sa Tomas Morato QC (likod ng Popular Bookstore).
Kasama sina:
Brgy. Malaya Reading Club
The Kjalums
Chimmy Meer x Noah Loyola x Alyssa Danielle Navarro x Art by Lix x Miko Diosay electromilk x argues
LILYRESH
Alagwa
Basil Balanon x kenkacles
Surian ng Sining
Dugtungan
KAYAKOTO ENTERPRISES
Shoestring Operations
Ligalig lowercase collective
Renz Rosario x UPOU Writers’ Club x KultOU x UP 4
Palestine x SALAM Palestine
Palaman Collective
FreeEmBee
Donna Miranda x Angelo V. Suarez x UMA
Liam de Leon
Lomboy Press
“Unnamed Poetry Group”
Something Normal x SusciPepe x Rob Cham
Bulatlat x NUJP G.A.G.A Girls
Manic Printing
Roxy Cruz x Ange Labyrinth
ARTEHAN X ISLA CLUB
YOSILOG
pollenpiggycreates x Maya Narra
Queendom 2
Likha ni Nadia x Chiiinai
Gadgad Press
Project Kainaman x Gama Collective
Mixchief Collective
Vanessa Haro x Arvee D. Lao
Zines ni Angel x Rhanydell x lemonmaho x acielo
Indie Reads & Kriselda Freedom
Kalapati Retrograde x Harvey Castillo x Regular Days
Ched and friends
Packing Sheets
Maynard Ramos
Bawat Sulok ng Buhay
Sense-Shifts
Kannaway Collective x Librong LIRA
eyjiyap x khadaliz
malloy_lyjan
ARPAK - Artista ng Rebolusyong Pangkultura
Maligaya House x The O Home
Rural Women Advocates
Gantala Press
Tatriz Asia
Library Una
Good Food Community
Another Green World x Kowtow Komiks
Paper Trail Projects
Magpies
Makô Micro-Press
Labanan ang export-reliant content farm-centric creative industry! Suportahan ang national indiestrialisation ng kultura! Free Sudan! Free Palestine!
** BLTX is free for all, but please scan the QR code to register! **
29/11/2025
Our keynote speech at the 5th Edel Garcellano Conference, organized by the humanities programs of Polytechnic University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University.
✊🏾✒️
‘[As] Jean Paul Sartre and Garcellano had insisted, writers, who are first of all supposedly committed to truth, are bound to be engaged. As stated by Petronilo Daroy, a writer’s stature is measured not so much by the volume of her works as by her capacity to assume public responsibility. “The writer’s concern for literature, for art and aesthetics, becomes continuous with his concern to recreate society, to establish institutions, and to elevate the quality of life of a people. The aesthetic concern finds its issues not only in art but in revolutionizing and society.” E San Juan Jr said that whatever a writer’s class may be, her primary duty is “to describe accurately the objective historical process, the unity of opposing forces” or the various contradictions that bring about change, and thus “inevitably commit herself to the cause of progress.”
Ateneo de Manila University Literary and Cultural Studies Program
Kritika Kultura
Ateneo Archive of Philippine Literature in English
Kwan Laurel Fund for the Humanities
PUP Research Institute for Culture and Language
PUP Center for Creative Writing
PUP Center for Philippine Studies
Faye CuraKeynote speech at the 5th Edel Garcellano ConferenceAteneo de Manila University, November 29, 2025 Magandang umaga sa lahat. Thank you to the organizers of the 5th Edel Garcellano Academic…
28/11/2025
See you tomorrow! ✊🏾✒️
28/11/2025
Wakasan na ang korapsiyon, panlilinlang at pandarambong! Sumama sa lakas ng sambayanang babahang muli sa Luneta sa Nobyembre 30, Araw ni Bonifacio. Kita-kits!
26/11/2025
✨Excited for our 2026 calendar! Featuring revolutionary women from around the world 🇵🇸🇵🇭🇨🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇷🇺🇺🇸🇩🇪🇲🇽
For sale at ’s BLTX Small Press Expo in December ✨
Illustrated & designed by Alyssa Crisostomo
23/11/2025
22/11/2025
This November 2025, and hosted the Fourth School of Human Rights Defenders, with a focus on Cultural Human Rights. Previous Schools tackled the defense of human rights, the environment and climate justice, and peace talks. This year, artists and cultural workers from Colombia, Kurdistan, Palestine, and the Philippines were invited to Barcelona to share how culture is utilized for survival, resistance, and peace. Presented were peasant women’s literature from the Philippines, dance from Palestine, languages from Kurdistan, and theater and puppets from Colombia. Discussions on culture as a human right, protection mechanisms for its defenders, and community support were also organized. ✊🏾❤️
19/11/2025
Join us for the 5th Edel Garcellano Conference:
"Committed Writing Now" on November 29, 2025, at Faber 101, from 8AM to 6PM. Honoring the life and work of one of the Philippines' most uncompromising critics, the conference sheds light on the state of committed writing in the Philippines and the diaspora today.
Register now: https://go.ateneo.edu/5thGarcellano
If you’re looking for fresh perspectives and insights into criticism, pedagogy, writing and more, then we have the event for you!
Ateneo de Manila University and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines are proud to present the 5th Edel Garcellano Conference entitled “Committed Writing Now”! On November 29, 2025, join us at Faber 101 from 8AM to 6PM for a day full of ideas, conversations, and insights. Honoring the life and work of one of the Philippines’ most uncompromising critics, the conference sheds light on the state of committed writing in the Philippines and the diaspora today. From panel discussions to exciting performances, this year’s Edel Garcellano conference surely has something for everyone.
International Action for Peace and Associació Catalana per la Pau host the fourth edition of the School of Defenders, a space for exchange and learning that this year brings together in Catalonia human rights defenders, and more specifically cultural rights defenders, from Colombia, Palestine, Kurdistan and the Philippines.
In a context like the present one, marked by multiple and growing global threats (wars, the rise of authoritarianism, the climate crisis, disinformation campaigns, and hate speech...), defending life, territory, or one’s voice can cost freedom or even life itself. Faced with this, women artists, as often-invisible political subjects, use art as a tool for resistance, denunciation, community building, and historical memory.
Language, music, dance, theater, ways of seeing and narrating the world are also human rights. Defending them, especially in contexts of conflict, colonialism, or occupation, is a profound form of resistance. Cultural defenders keep alive the memories, knowledge, and expressions that sustain collective dignity. In their creation and struggle lies the possibility of another world.
Starting from all these global and specific challenges, this new edition of the School for Defenders proposes a space for meeting, training and exchange, so that cultural defenders from diverse backgrounds can, on the one hand, reinforce their knowledge in artistic methodologies and processes of cultural resistance and, on the other hand, forge links with other experiences of struggle and creation.
18/11/2025
Tunghayan ang pagbasa ni Nanding Josef ng tulang "Sanggano" ni Joey Baquiran.
Mababasa ang tulang ito at iba pang tula ng pakikiisa sa mamamayang Palestino sa "Pagkat tayo man ay may Sampaga: New Philippine Writing and Translation for a Free Palestine" na inedit nina Joi Barrios, Faye Cura, Sarah Raymundo at Rolando Tolentino (Gantala Press, 2025).
Mabibili ang libro sa Chapterhouse o kaya'y sa Shopee store ng Gantala Press.
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On Feminism
Drawn from interview questions by students.
Gantala Press is an independent, all-women, feminist collective that seeks to enrich and promote Philippine women's writing by publishing works for, of, and by women. Since its establishment in 2015, it has published varied materials such as anthologies, komix, a recipe book, zines, etc. that discuss the status of women in different patriarchal contexts. We also collaborate closely with women from other marginalized sectors, such as peasants.
Feminism is a critical analysis of the socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-cultural aspects of a context / environment to understand how they shape the concept of gender, especially of women. We believe that the fight to destroy oppressive class relations, which is the root of all oppression, is intertwined with the fight to destroy patriarchy. You cannot have one without the other. It is essential to point out that feminism does not and must not detach itself from its economic and political roots: that upholding feminism must also mean upholding better living and working conditions not only for the women and their family but for the nation entirely.
That it is "anti-male," or "extreme," or "exclusionary;" that it is rabid and hysterical. Some so-called nationalists also maintain that the struggle for gender equality is not a priority and must take the back seat, and that all efforts should go towards class struggle; that feminism must wait until after class liberation. Some people also think that feminism is nothing but a western, bourgeois construct and that Filipinos have no use for it. We have also heard of Filipina feminists who dread to be thought of as "anti-Duterte" and who think that feminism should accommodate anyone, whatever her political beliefs are. We think that, especially in these times, a feminist cannot help but be anti-Duterte. We really find it hard to imagine a pro-Duterte feminist. A feminist is against oppression, first and foremost, and Duterte is the embodiment of the kind of oppression that Filipinas have always been trying to overcome. We have heard liberal feminists call feminism a "fun" thing to do, which is very silly. All over the world, throughout history, feminists have been castigated, harassed, or killed for their beliefs and actions. Actually, women in general are still being castigated, harassed, or killed for simply being women. The president constantly puts down women and tries to pass this off as just “having fun.” We cannot afford to "have fun," or in this case at least, to use the language of the oppressor in fighting oppression.
By publishing feminist, class-conscious, progressive materials; organizing events where women are central; and attending rallies. One of our founders is actively working with peasant women, and this deeply informs her literary works, whether poetry or zines. We also try to join as many conversations as possible about feminism in the Philippines, for example by delivering lectures and workshops in schools, and by answering thesis questions like these.
Our main accomplishments are really the books we have produced. We are very proud of each of them. Our first book is an anthology of women's writings which we think includes a good representation not of "women's writings" per se, but of women's experiences in the country (and even abroad). That book includes poems, essays, and stories about le****ns, mothers, biracials, daughters, workers, political prisoners, Muslims, lumad, women in the Cordillera region, artists, writers, and others, written in various Philippine languages. Our second publication is a collection of essays by women on the Marawi siege, followed by a Mranao cookbook which, although written by a man, is a good documentation of a woman-shaped culture that is severely threatened by militarization. We're publishing a second volume on the siege, which will include essays and poems written mostly by women from Marawi / Mindanao. The Marawi project was done in the context of an entire information and fundraising campaign which also opened much-needed conversations about women and war, and connected us to a lot of people who eventually became partners and collaborators. We have just published an anthology of le***an komix created by q***r women, one of the first of its kind in the country. Part of the proceeds of all our books go to various causes: for IDPs, peasant women and children, and student organizations, for example.
More publications, especially those that document women’s lives and histories, and a physical space where women can gather and have meaningful feminist conversations and be creative and productive.
Class oppression and class inequality.
Our women have always been strong, powerful, and revolutionary; many Filipinas in history prove that. However, the so-called gender equality does not manifest itself in everyday life. Our women still suffer from sexual harassment and r**e, domestic abuse and violence, and mockery or denigration by everything and everyone from the president to the media to our fellow women. We have had two woman presidents and a number of women in government but they turned out to be loyal to their class, not to their sisters. Some of Duterte's most rabid defenders are women who insult or blame his victims! Likewise, a great majority of Filipinos still live in poverty. If you're a woman farmer, for example, your suffering is twice your husband's because, as head of the family, it is only the husband who gets paid (almost next to nothing) for farm work even if his wife or children has labored along with him. And after a day's work in the farm, the wife has to take care of the children and other household chores simply because she is expected to. So, as long as many women still live in abject poverty like this, there is no true gender equality.
Feminism is necessary as long as class struggle is necessary. Though the Philippines might appear gender equal on the surface, there will always be women exploitation and abuse unless we call for a national system overhaul. Because Gantala Press envisions not only a gender equal community but a community free from all forms of exploitation, we continue with our publication endeavors that take strength from progressive roots.
