The resurgence of literary writing among Ilonggos in the last decade and the extensive use of internet technology around the globe provided the impetus for two friends, Evee Huervana (now Evee van der Walt) and Cheryl Cabillon, to create a website project featuring Ilonggo writers and their works in July 2000. With the help of Communications Engineer Norman Mabalot as webmaster, the website project Ilonggo Literature Archive (ILA) was born.
A year-and-a-half and ten thousand website visitors later, the project emerged as a focal point to which contemporary literary writers in Iloilo were drawn. As more writers got involved and the workload became bigger, it became apparent that the project now demanded the skills and talents of more than three individuals. This called for the creation of the literary group, Ilonggo Literature Archive, Inc., a non-stock non-profit literary organization registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 19, 2001. The organization aims to preserve, promote and develop the literary heritage of Western Visayan writers and to make this heritage available to all people of the world in various media.
While it enjoyed literary grants and
staged successful literary events for a few years, the organization became inactive and the website
fell away. In September 2010, however, the website was resurrected and came
online again, this time as www.ilonggoliterature.org. The website with the URL www.ilonggoliterature.com
remained in use for a few years but is now obsolete.
ILA is on the loose. It is
out to discover talents, support striving writers, and offer an avenue for
creative expressions. ILA has many legs and a single
brain. The brain runs on a microchip programmed to carve a niche in world
literature. It knows many languages but speaks the voice of its people.
Making up the synapses of the microchip are researchers, teachers, writers,
scholars and literature devotees whose only passion is to celebrate the word
become flesh.