Miguel Syjuco is 32. He was born in Manila, lived for a decade in Canada, spent three years in Adelaide completing his PhD in creative writing and currently works as an editor at the Gazette in Montreal. Ilustrado won the largest literary prize in the Philippines, the Palanca Award and was recently awarded the Man Asia Literary Award for the best unpublished novel, written in English, by an Asian writer. Ilustrado will be published by Farrar Straus Girroux in the US and Picador in the UK.