Karlo Sevilla

Karlo Sevilla (he/him) of Quezon City, Philippines is a 2024 International Fellow of the International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM) for poetry. He is the author of seven poetry books: “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018), “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017), "Outsourced! . . ." (Revolt Magazine, 2021), "Recumbent" (8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, 2023), "Figuratively: A Chapbook of Shape Poems" (Gorilla Printing, 2024), "Datuterte: Imagined Confession, 2024" (IHRAM, 2024), and "The Boy On the Hill" (IHRAM, 2024). Thrice nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology⁠—by Ariel Chart in 2018, Collective Unrest in 2019, and Woolgathering Review in 2021⁠⁠—his poems were first published in Philippines Free Press in 1998 and Philippines Graphic in 2000.  In the succeeding years, he became considerably less active in writing and submitting poems for publication. Then, in 2014 his passion for poetry was rekindled and in 2015 his poems were published in Pacifiqa and again in Philippines Graphic. Hence, he has almost 300 poems published in various literary magazines, anthologies, and other platforms worldwide. In 2020, he was one of the contributors to "Pandemic: A Community Poem," which was nominated by Muse-Pie Press for that year's Pushcart Prize. He belonged to the first batch of students (school year 2018) of the Creative Writing in Filipino program of the Center for Creative Writing of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and is a member of the Rat's Ass Review online poetry workshop. He also coaches wrestling and Brazilian Luta Livre, and won a gold medal in the 2016 ADCC Southeast Asia – Philippine International Submission Fighting Open and in the Greco-Roman wrestling event of the 2011 Philippine National Games.