The Ateneo de Manila University Press is named Publisher of the Year at the 39th National Book Awards, a signal honor as it celebrates its golden anniversary. Handed out by the Manila Critics’ Circle (MCC) and the National Book Development Board (NBDB), the 39th National Book Awards recognizes the best locally-published books of 2019 and 2020.

The awards ceremony was held last July 30, 2022, via NBDB’s online channels. Having won eight National Book Awards in different categories, the most by a publisher, Ateneo Press was declared Publisher of the Year.

Out of their 29 finalists, the eight titles which won are:

5 for 5 decades

Ateneo Press was first named Publisher of the Year in 2008. It went on to win the award for consecutive years in 2017, 2018, 2019, and now for the fifth time, in 2022. This year’s recognition is a special one as the Ateneo Press celebrates its 50th founding anniversary.

Established in 1972, the Ateneo University Press first made its mark with books that pioneered in Philippine Studies, in the humanities and social sciences. It initiated the recovery and publication of Filipino classic literary works. Ateneo Press has since expanded to include titles in archaeology, arts, biography, cultural heritage, diaspora studies, governance and political change, law and society, leadership, Mindanao studies, science and society, and theology and religious studies.

Ateneo Press director Maria Karina Bolasco, during her acceptance speech, speaks of the important role of writers who are “of good heart and critical mind, with their stimulating content that are exacting in form, and for their remarkable words, that without fail shape the truth, purpose, and meaning of life for themselves and countless others, for the sake of our many communities that form our nation.”

Narrating the Nation

In its 50th year, the Ateneo Press looks back at its landmark titles that have deepened the understanding of various fields of study as it renews its commitment to bravely narrate the nation through well-written, extensively-researched, and well-produced books on the Philippines and its multifarious concerns.

Alfred McCoy, author of several Ateneo Press titles on social sciences, commends the Press for its “thoughtful engaged effort.” He writes, “Congratulations to Ateneo Press for 50 years of distinguished academic publishing. My six bookcases filled with Filipiniana have dozens of Ateneo de Manila University Press titles, which remain central to Philippine Studies. So it’s not just 50 years on the clock, but 50 years of thoughtful engaged effort.” McCoy wrote one of Ateneo Press’s landmark and best-selling titles An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines.

Exceptional in their own terms are the twenty other Ateneo Press finalists who are interventional in their paths of scholarship:

- Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth-Century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896 by Stephanie Coo and designed by Felix Mago Miguel, Jr. as finalist for Best Book in Design

- Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912 by Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz and Philippine Politics and the Marcos Technocrats: The Emergence and Evolution of a Power Elite by Teresa Tadem as finalists for Best Book in History

- Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right by Walden Bello and A Capital City at the Margins: Quezon City and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century Philippines by Michael Pante as finalists for Best Book for Social Sciences

- School is Life: Progressive Education in the Philippines by Ani Rosa Almario and Tina Zamora and Creating Sustainable Value in Social Enterprises: Stories of Social Innovation by Maria Assunta Cuyegkeng, Raquel Cementina-Olpoc, and Ana Marina Tan as finalists for Best Book for Professions

- The Art of Collecting: A Guide to the Philippine Market by Joseph Sedfrey Santiago as finalist for Best Book in Art

- Jose Rizal: Liberalismo at ang Balintuna ng Kolonyalidad ni Lisandro Claudio at salin ni Mikael de Lara Co, Canal de la Reina by Liwayway Arceo and translated by Soledad Reyes, and The Last Timawa: A Novel by Servando de los Angeles also translated by Soledad Reyes as finalists for Best Translated Book

- Marawi and Other Poems by Simeon Dumdum, Jr and Di Achichuk by Dorian Merina as Best Book for Poetry in English

- Children of the Postcolony: Filipino Intellectuals and Decolonization, 1946-1972 by Charlie Samuya Veric as finalist for Best Book for Literary Criticism/Literary History in English

- Virgin (muli) Po Ako: (mga dulang may isang yugto) ni Reuel Molina Aguila as finalist for Best Book in Drama

- A Pig Was Once Killed In Our Garage by Martin Villanueva as finalist for Best Book of Essays in English

- City Stories by Angelo Lacuesta and A Natural History of Empire by Dominic Sy as finalists for Best Book of Short Stories in English

- Broken Islands by Criselda Yabes and The Age of Umbrage by Jessica Zafra as finalists for Best Novel in English

Bolasco further encourages writers to “continue to immerse, engage, analyze, speak out, document, appreciate, resist, imagine, liberate, create, and love,” for her many years in Philippine book publishing have taught her that “that is how books are written, that is how books are read.”

As the Ateneo Press celebrates its anniversary, several book events, author engagements, and book deals are being organized over the course of the year. Monthly forthcoming titles, book talks, and sale events are regularly announced on their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages, @ateneopress. Follow them for updates or email marketing.unipress@ateneo.edu.