TALE OF AN AWARD-WINNING FILIPINO AMERICAN AUTHOR

Victoria Grageda-Smith is a first-generation immigrant in the United States who reinvented herself from the accomplished lawyer she was in the Philippines to an award-winning American author published in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

Believing we experience reality according to what we think of reality and that, ironically, truth may often be more effectively conveyed through fiction than nonfiction, she wants to empower her readers by helping them experience various realities through her stories and poems, which could expand their awareness and understanding of the human condition and the integrant relationship between and among human beings, and between humans and the natural environment. As a Filipino immigrant writer in the US, she is especially motivated to write literary fiction and poetry inspired by, among others, the immigrant experience, particularly in the context of the shared historical and cultural heritage of Americans and Filipinos, and to elucidate such particular perspectives within the universal human experience and consciousness.

Her debut novel, THE THOMASITE (Orange Blossom Publishing, 2023) won Second Place in the 2024 BookFest Awards and was among the headliner authors’ works featured in the 2023 Orcas Island Lit Fest. She also wrote the Driftless Unsolicited Award-winning novella, FAITH HEALER (Brain Mill Press, 2016) and the Fifth Annual Ventura Country Star - Ventura County Writers Club First-Place-winning short story, “Portrait of the Other Lady”(Ventura County Star, November 28, 2004). 

Her poetry collection, WARRIOR HEART, PILGRIM SOUL: An Immigrant’s Journey (CreateSpace, 2013), was well received by Kirkus Reviews. Her poems were finalists in the 2024 Yellow Arrow Publishing Chapbook Contest, 2017 New Millennium Poetry Awards, 2016 Edwin Markham Poetry Award Contest, 2016 Knightville Poetry Contest, and 2016 Crosswinds Poetry Journal Contest and appear in, among others, Reed Magazine, Slippery Elm Journal, Lyrical Iowa, Fifth Estate, and Dicta.

The anthology, OTHERS WILL ENTER THE GATES: IMMIGRANT POETS ON POETRY, INFLUENCES, AND WRITING IN AMERICA (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) features her essay, “Gatekeepers and Gatecrashers in Contemporary American Poetry: Reflections of a Filipino Immigrant Poet in the United States.”

She is currently marketing her two new book manuscripts: DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO, a collection of feminist immigrant stories, and MOTHERS OF EXILES, a poetry collection inspired by the diaspora and immigrant experience (finalist in the 2024 Yellow Arrow Publishing’s Poetry Chapbook Contest).

Among her works-in-progress are: GABRIELA’S EYES, a literary historical novel set in the Pacific theater of World War II about a Filipino comfort woman; FINDING QIHARA, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel set in two alternative realities—an apocalyptic future created by global climate change and a parallel utopian universe (finalist in the 2024 World Diversity Grant contest); and INCURSIONS OF LIGHT, a third poetry collection inspired by the theme of spiritual awakening.

When Victoria is not writing, she likes to travel and immerse herself in a different culture, read, hike in the woods or hills, and walk on the beach with her family and their dog at their US Pacific Northwest island home in the Puget Sound.

Details and updates on her literary work are available here at VictoriaGSmith.com, Facebook Author Victoria Grageda-Smith, Twitter @AuthorVGSmith, and Instagram VictoriaGSmithAuthor.