Contemporary Filipino Writer

•JASON TANAMOR•

Jason Tanamor (born April 25, 1975) is a Filipino-American author, writer, and entertainment interviewer. He also works as a contracting officer at Bonneville Power Administration within the United States Department of Energy. He is a former contract specialist for the United States Department of Defense. His novels range in genre from dark in nature to satirical and from young adult to children’s.

His two novels Anonymous and Drama Dolls, have received critical acclaim from major publications such as Publishers Weekly – who called him a “promising writer with lots of potential” and compared him to Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski and Audio Book Reviewer.

Tanamor’s newest effort, a YA(young adult literature) titled Love, Dance & Egg Rolls are set in Portland during the Trump Administration and follows high school sophomore, Jamie, whose sole purpose in life is to become the next Tinikling master. (Tinikling is the national dance of the Philippines.)

His novel, a NA(new adult) urban fantasy about Filipino folklore (aswang) called Vampires of Portlandia, touches upon his love for campy horror stories. “It’s not really a fascination but I do love the genre but mixed with dark humor or comedy, which includes the shows ‘Supernatural’ and ‘Grimm’, and the movies ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘Beetlejuice’. And with the ages of the main characters (they’re in their young twenties) in Vampires of Portlandia, there is a little bit of a ‘Twilight’ feel as well. The new novel is a mashup of these shows and movies.” His masterpiece “Aswang” is a Filipino umbrella term for “monster/s,” usually connoting supernatural shapeshifters that look human by day but transform into other kinds of entities at night that have a propensity for ingesting human fluids or innards.

He and his books have been featured in many publications such as Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Yahoo!, Esquire (Philippines),CNN Philippines, Daily Inquirer (Philippines), and Daily Tribune (Philippines). Tanamor also is ranked in the Favorite Filipino and Filipino-American Author poll at Ranker.

In December 2001, Tanamor began writing for The Western Courier, the student newspaper at his alma mater, Western Illinois University, in Macomb, Illinois. After one of his first humor/entertainment columns appeared, a Macomb resident wrote in to the editor stating that Tanamor was embarrassing the community by writing babble instead of contributing columns with insight. The concerned citizen said that Tanamor had an “amateurish level of writing skills.” Tanamor continued to write for the paper until December 2002, when he graduated.
From December 2001 to September 2003, Tanamor expanded his reach by contributing to the Internet humor magazine, Just Laugh. There, he wrote comedic opinion pieces and fictitious news stories.

In August 2004, Tanamor started the entertainment website, Zoiks! Online. The first edition ran for almost 18 months. However, his busy schedule put the website on the back burner. According to the Moline Dispatch, “when he went back to relaunch the site, he found he’d forgotten his password, as well as the answers to the security questions he’d made up, and the site’s host, Yahoo! wouldn’t reveal them, despite his efforts.” Tanamor stated that although losing his password sucked, he could definitely vouch for Yahoo!’s security. Ultimately, Tanamor ended up re-launching the site later in October 2008.

Last Completed Projects