Selected by torrin a. greathouse as the winner of the 2024 Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Prize, Carissa Natalia Baconguis’ debut collection Sacred and Perishable (Nine Syllables Press, 2025) borrows and refashions tropes of cinematic body horror, Filipino mythologies, and religious imagery to tell the interlinked stories of two young characters: Dian, a medical student and Carlos, a shapeshifter. Bodily mutation becomes increasingly prominent over the course of Sacred and Perishable, as Baconguis peels back layers of euphemistic speech and image often used to paper over experiences of brutality in queer and trans life. The collection uses the tropes of body horror to both interrogate grief and manifest solace. As Baconguis wrote in the afterword of her collection, “it is essential to create queer narratives of friendship, as the foundations of liberation are built upon these community relationships.”
Baconguis is a 2024 graduate of St. Cloud State University with an M.A. in English. Born and raised in the Philippines, she maintains the presence of her home country in her writing, shedding light on the underrepresented diasporic Filipino experience.
Baconguis’ reading (with Linda Harris Dolan) will be followed by conversation with Adrie Rose in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, October 7 at 7 p.m. Free & open to the public. Books will be sold and a signing will follow. Livestream also available on the BDPC YouTube page.
