Noel Alumit (born January 1, 1968)

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Noël Alumit is an American novelist, actor, and activist. He has been identified as one of the Top 100 Influential Gay People by Out Magazine.

He was born, the second of four children, in Baguio City, the Philippines, and raised in Los Angeles, United States. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from the University of Southern California and later studied playwriting at the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute at East West Players.

Alumit's play Mr. and Mrs. La Questa Go Dancing was produced by Teatro Ng Tanan in San Francisco and also in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Boston, and Philadelphia. Other plays penned by Alumit have been showcased at East West Players in Los Angeles and the Ma-Yi Theater Company in New York.

His one-man show, The Rice Room: Scenes From a Bar, was voted one of the best solo shows of the year by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and played to sold-out houses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities. He also wrote and performed another successful solo show, Master of the (Miss) Universe at Highways Performance Art Space in Santa Monica, California. Master of the (Miss) Universe was named "Best Bet" by The Los Angeles Times.

His work has been published in Tilting the Continent (New Rivers Press), Take Out (Asian American Writers Workshop/Temple University), Subterraneans, and the literary journal DisOrient. His heralded debut novel, Letters to Montgomery Clift (MacAdam/Cage), received the 2003 Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association for literature, the Violet Quill Award from Insight Out Books, the Global Filipino Literary Award from Our Own Voice and the Gold Seal from ForeWord Magazine. His second novel, Talking To the Moon, was released in late 2006 by Carroll & Graf.

As an actor, Alumit's film and TV credits include Beverly Hills, 90210, The Young and the Restless, and Red Surf. He has performed in many Los Angeles productions, including the world premiere of Chay Yew's A Language of Their Own (LA Weekly Theater Award for Ensemble Performance) and Michael Kearns' Who's Afraid of Edward Albee.

Alumit received an Emerging Voices Fellowship from PEN Center USA West and a Community Access Scholarship to UCLA's Writers Extension, studying fiction and the personal essay form.

He was awarded the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize by the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in 2010.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Alumit

Further Readings:

Letters to Montgomery Clift by Noel Alumit
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Alyson Books (September 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555838154
ISBN-13: 978-1555838157
Amazon: Letters to Montgomery Clift: A Novel

This haunting and compelling novel of a Filipino boy sent to America by his parents to escape the brutal Marcos regime is a story of hope set against a backdrop of abuse and alienation. Following the Filipino tradition of writing letters to the ghosts of ancestors, Bong Bong Luwad begins to write letters to the ghost of Montgomery Clift, at first asking to be reunited with his family, but as he undergoes the pains of adolescence, sexual discovery, and mental illness, the letters form a journal of self-discovery.

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