Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. has published poems in Rattle, Shanghai Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SingPoWriMo, and other journals and anthologies. He has received prizes from the Palanca Awards, Kokoy Guevara Poetry Competition, and British Council, among others. He is the author of two chapbooks, Requiem and Hymnal, and his first full-length collection, Aria and Trumpet Flourish, is forthcoming from Math Paper Press in Singapore. “In the Church” is part of a series that riffs on Jose Rizal’s novel Noli me Tangere, which satirizes and criticizes many of the Catholic Church’s practices.

Phyu Mon (1960- ) is regarded as one of Myanmar’s most profiled conceptual artists. The Mandalay-born artist graduated from Mandalay University with a BA in Literature and studied painting under U Ba Thaw between 1978 and 1979. She earned a diploma in photography from the Myanmar Photography Association, and a photo creation and editing diploma from the High Tech Training School. In 2013, she accepted a post graduate diploma from Yangon Art and Culture University. She is one of the very few women artists in Myanmar who currently works with digital photography and visual art. Though Phyu Mon had exhibited her Symbolic paintings in group exhibitions since 1985 and became a renowned poet and writer, she developed a keen interest in conceptual art from her husband, Chan Aye. During the 1990s, when it was quite rare for a woman artist to present a one-woman performance, Phyu Mon performed Human Being Object, followed by a number of shows both in Myanmar and abroad. However Phyu Mon is best known as a leading digital artist. At a time when feminine art practice in Myanmar could be termed as ambiguous, Phyu Mon’s broad conceptual art practice included not only her digital artworks but also performance, video, sound art and installations. Phyu Mon initiated the Blue Wind Multimedia Art Festival in 2009 at Myanmar National Museum. Her art works have also been exhibited in Japan, Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Denmark, Spain, USA, UK , Italy, and France. In 2016, she organized an art workshop at Aswara Art University in Malaysia.