Eileen R. Tabios is a prolific writer, and writer across genres. She’s released over 60 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism from publishers in 11 countries; this year she also is scheduled to release French translations of her writings in France. But despite the abundance of her publications, it required 20 years for Eileen to accomplish her first long-form novel, coming out April 2021.

DOVELION is an inventive, multi-layered novel featuring a poet, Elena Theeland, as she overcomes the trauma of her past. Theeland ends up raising a family who overthrows the dictatorship of the novel’s fictional country of Pacifica. She is aided by artist Ernst Blazer whose father, a CIA spy, instigated the murder of Elena’s father, a rebel leader. As her family frees Pacifica from the dictator’s dynastic regime, Elena discovers herself a member of an indigenous tribe once thought to have been erased through genocide. That discovery reveals her life to epitomize the birth of a modern-day “Baybay” modeled after the “Babaylan,” an indigenous spiritual and community leader of the Philippines.