Background
Born Miguel Augusto Gabriel J. Syjuco, he is the son of Representative Augusto Syjuco Junior. of the second district of Iloilo in the Philippine House of Representatives, and Judy Jalbuena.
Born Miguel Augusto Gabriel J. Syjuco, he is the son of Representative Augusto Syjuco Junior. of the second district of Iloilo in the Philippine House of Representatives, and Judy Jalbuena.
Syjuco graduated from high school in 1993 from the Cebu International School. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the Ateneo de Manila University in 2000 and completed his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 2004. In early 2011 he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in literature from the University of Adelaide.
Early in his career, he was a fellow of the 1998 Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental. The novel was also a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers" Prize, a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, and a finalist for the 2010 Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal. In late 2010, Ilustrado was published in translation in Spanish (Tusquets), Swedish (Natur och Kultur), and Dutch (Mouria).
In 2011, Ilustrado joined books by David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon, Marie NBiaye, and Wells Tower for the Premio von Rezzori.
lieutenant was also among the three top finalists for the $55,000 Prix January Michalski, an annual Swiss prize for the best international book, as well as the Prix Courrier International, which honors the best international books translated in France. In 2011, it was published in translation in Serbian (Geopoetika), French (Editions Christian Bourgois), Catalan (Tusquets), Italian (Fazi), Japanese (Hakusuisha), Czechoslovakian (Jota), German (Klett-Cotta), and Brazilian Portuguese (Compahnia das Letras).
Syjuco is represented by Peter Straus at the Rogers, Coleridge and White Literary Agency in London, and by Melanie Jackson in New York City. He has already sold a second book to North American publishers.
In 2013, he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.
In 2014, he served as the International Writer-in-Residence at NTU, in Singapore. Personal Since 2004 Syjuco has been based primarily in Montreal, Quebec.