ABOUT Passkey

POET, Writer-Journalist, Traveler, Cook... 

PASCKIE PASCUA is a "renaissance dude on wok," as a friend fondly calls him. He is a veteran journalist-editor-publisher who survived a turbulent dictatorial regime in his home-country of the Philippines, then traveled through four continents—backpacked his way through people’s love for words, passion for community, and madness for food. He is a poet, filmmaker, teacher, artist/painter, musician, and yes—a cook. 
HIS WORDS: “Those who had the sweet misfortune of knowing me for years believe I am gargantuan lump of contradiction fitted in a slight frame of oblique acerbidity. The truth is, I am just some super-corny dude who believes that a truckload of red roses--and a plateful of culinary pleasures--can get me near my Muse. I am primitive as my heart, ordinary as Sunburst laundry detergent, harmless as a shot of cold sake, simple as free couch obtained at Craigslist, cute as a baboon…” 
ON A MORE serious note: Pasckie Pascua studied Mass Communication at the University of the Philippines in Manila. He also took Film programs at Tisch School of Arts, New York University. From late-70s to early-90s, he was a fulltime member of various respected progressive/artist/media organizations in Manila, especially during the difficult years of the dictatorship. Pasckie is an awarded playwright, poet, and documentary filmmaker. On the sides, he played drums for several bands; paints; and reviews CDs, films and books; and organizes concerts. 
HE LECTURED or taught “people’s theater” (Brechtian/Boal) and community media in the countrysides of the Philippines, Japan, Italy, North Carolina, and upstate New York. He published (and edited) the community papers, The Indie, Blue Sky Asheville, and Wander—under his Loved by the Buffalo Publications—in Asheville, North Carolina (from winter 2000 to fall 2007). He is the founding executive director of the non-profit “people’s culture” organization, Traveling Bonfires. 
PASCKIE co-edited the Manhattan NY-based Headline Philippines from 1998 to 2001, on and off; and was recently a Contributing Editor for the Southern California/Los Angeles bureau of Philippine News, the oldest nationally-distributed Filipino/Asian-American newspaper in the US. He was also a film/book/music reviewer/critic for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the largest English-language newspaper in the Philippines, and the defunct Isyu newsmagazine, mouthpiece of Manila's "respected thinkers" and columnists.
BEFORE he made the US his adapted home, Pasckie jumpstarted his journalism career as a 14-year old cub reporter for a provincial newspaper, and then apprenticed for the late and revered Filipino journalist-editor Jose Burgos Jr., publisher of We Forum/Malaya, a vanguard in Philippine alternative press in the 1980s. Pasckie was a journeyman writer even before he reached the age of 30—having worked for print, radio, and TV in various capacities, as well as a community organizer/media specialist in coastal villages and farming barrios in the countrysides. He served as media liaison staff for the late president Corazon Aquino’s “good government” commission in late 1980s, and was a member of a consulting team for Philippine presidential candidate Senator (deceased) Raul Roco in the 1990s. 
PASCKIE PASCUA lives in Candler, 12 miles to/from downtown Asheville.