PR: What To Expect From The Power of Pen Food Writing Forum Visayas Tour

PRESS RELEASE---Food has gone out of the confines of the kitchen. For many years now, its emergence in art has influenced our experience with cookery. Aside from the act of preparing a dish; our contemporary culture has opened to many other subjects of interest such as food blogging, food styling, and food writing in general. In fact, the vast surfacing of blogs and social media platforms have instituted food blogging as a career path for those who would like to establish themselves in the culinary world. Food writing and critiquing however are not merely made of personal commentaries of one’s experience of a specific dish or restaurant. Its arising demand for discourse and discussion have initiated The Power of Pen, a food writing forum workshop that aims to instruct both amateur and professional writers and culinary practitioners as to how they should utilize writing in their chosen fields of either exploration or expertise.  On its 5th year, The Power of Pen is touring Visayas with the University of Cebu as its co-presentor and official venue. The forum will be studded by highly commendable personalities from our culinary and cultural threshold from chefs and restaurateurs to authors and publishers.

To give a general overview of food writing is Anne Marie Ozaeta, Editor‐in‐chief of the Philippine’s largest selling culinary Magazine, FOOD by ABS‐CBN Publishing. Previously, she served as the editor‐in-chief of F&B World Magazine, the country's premiere foodservice magazine. She has also edited several culinary books, most recently Philippine Cookery: From Heart to Platter written by Chef Tatung Sarthou. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Brown University and a Master's Degree in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She landed her first full-­‐time job at the University of the Philippines Diliman where she taught essay and research writing, and literature to college undergraduates.

Michaela Fenix, an editor, and a food writer in Philippine Daily Inquirer will bring into discussion Food Knowledge: Building a Food Library and The Importance of Research for Food Stories and Ideas. Michaela Fenix is a veteran food writer who has toured various regions in the Philippines and has written explications about our diverse but all encompassing culinary flavors in her weekly column, Country Cooking. To date, she has written two books namely, Country Cooking, Philippine Regional Cuisines, and Cooking with Filipino Chefs and has co-authored A Culinary Life: Personal Recipe Collection with Nora Daza.

Myrna Segismundo, founder of the Doreen Gamboa‐Fernandez Food Writing Competition and the former director of 9501 Restaurant (exclusive executive restaurant of ABSCBN), will speak about the technicalities of recipe writing for culinary practitioners who will someday want to author their cook books. She has written two culinary books and has participated as a chef author in Kulinarya: A Guide to Philippine Cooking”.