Filipina poet Petronila Cleto, member of PEN Canada's Writers in Exile group,
selected as Lecturer-in-Residence at George Brown College

TORONTO, Aug. 30 /CNW/ - PEN Canada is pleased to announce that poet, playwright, critic and journalist Petronila Cleto has been selected as the 2010/11 Lecturer-in-Residence at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at George Brown College. Cleto moved to Canada in 1991, following a successful career as a newspaper columnist, features writer and investigative journalist in the Philippines. While in Canada she has coordinated non-profit and community-based theatre workshops, managed a Manila-based video news agency, and produced documentaries on political prisoners and migrant workers. In 2008, she was the International Writer-In-Residence at McMaster University.

Cleto became interested in journalism while writing and editing her high school newspaper in Manila.  In 1961 she received a silver medal from the National Secondary Schools Press Conference.  A few years later, while studying for a pre-medical degree, Cleto left Manila to pursue a BA in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa.  She then returned to the University of the Philippines for a BA in English and Comparative Literature. Here she became deeply involved in student politics. Outraged by the disappearances and killings which took place under the Martial Law imposed by President Marcos, she committed herself to a career as a professional journalist. She wrote on politics, culture,  human rights and poverty for mainstream publications such as The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Manila Times, and Malaya. While making her name as an investigative journalist, Cleto also taught theatre and journalism workshops and co-founded the Women's Crisis Centre, a shelter for survivors of sexual violence. 

Within the Philippines, Cleto is best known as a newspaper reporter and art/film critic. In the mid-1970s, while covering the Manila Film Festival, she produced a series of acclaimed profiles, critiques and interviews with such distinguished directors as Akira Kurosawa, Werner Herzog and Gillo Pontecorvo. In 2004 she was named as one of the country's leading film reviewers by the national association of film critics.  

Cleto is the author of five plays, including Operetang Tatlong Kusing (an adaptation of Bertold Brecht's Threepenny Opera), which has been produced twice by the University of the Philippines, and Pasintabi Sa Nuno (To Our Ancestors) which was performed at the Nancy International Theatre Festival in France. In 1987 families of the disappeared and the Philippine Task Force on Political Detainees commissioned her to produce a documentary on forced disappearances during the Marcos years. In 1994 she produced and wrote a documentary on Filipino migrant workers in Canada for the Philippine Solidarity Group of Toronto. Cleto also manages NEWSFILM, a Manila-based video-news agency she previously co-directed with a colleague who was killed while interviewing a well-known former political detainee.

Cleto will assume her duties as Lecturer-in-Residence in September, following an introduction at the annual George Brown College President's Breakfast on August 30.

Background: PEN Canada's Writers in Exile program tries to assist those writers whose voices have been silenced in their country of origin find communities of support in Canada. A decade ago PEN Canada established the Placement Program to engage exiled writers in literary and academic communities in Canada. George Brown has worked with PEN Canada 's Writers in Exile from early in the program's inception.

For further information:

Brendan de Caires, [email protected], tel. [phone] x 21