FILIPINO CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

Submitted by: Duenas, Kevin Lester Dugena, Kelly Rose Santos, Aleizel Santos, Rafael

Submitted to: Prof. LMN 4-ALM 7/5/2011

JOEY DALISAY JR. Dalisay was born in Romblon in 1954. He completed his primary education at La Salle Green Hills, Philippines in 1966 and his secondary education at the Philippine Science High School in 1970. He dropped out of college to work as a journalist after a period of imprisonment when Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declaredMartial Law in 1972. After his release as a political detainee, he also wrote scripts mostly for Lino Brocka, the National Artist of the Philippines for Theater and Film. Dalisay returned to school and earned his B.A. English degree, cum laude from the University of the Philippines in 1984. He later received an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in 1988 and a Ph.D in English from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 1991 as a Fulbright scholar. Dalisay has authored more than 20 books since 1984. Six of those books have garnered National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle. In 1998, Dalisay made it to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most accomplished Filipino artists of the past century. He also won 16 Palanca Awards in five genres. For winning at least five First Prize awards, he was elevated to the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000. He has also garnered five Cultural Center of the Philippines awards for playwriting; and FAMAS, URIAN, Star and Catholic Mass Media awards and citations for his screenplays. He also chaired the 1992 ASEAN Writers Conference/Workshop, in Penang, Malaysia. He was named one of The Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of 1993 for his creative writing. In 2005, he received the PremioCervara di Roma in Italy for extensively promoting Philippine literature overseas. In 2007, his second novel, Soledad's Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong. He has received Hawthornden Castle, British Council, David T.K. Wong, and Rockefeller (Bellagio) fellowships, and has held the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair at the Ateneo de Manila University; and the Jose Joya, Jorge Bocobo, and ElpidioQuirino professorial chairs at U.P. Diliman. He has lectured on Philippine culture andpolitics at the University of Michigan, University of Auckland, Australian National University, UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia, St. Norbert College (Wisconsin,U.S.A.), University of East Anglia, University of Rome, London School of Economics, and the University of California, San Diego. After serving for three years as English and Comparative Literature Department Chair, Dalisay assumed the post of Vice President for Public Affairs of the U.P. System from May 2003 to February 2005. He is currently a Professor of English and creative writing at the College of Arts and Letters, U.P. Diliman, where he also coordinated the creative writing program. He is also Director of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing. Aside from his column for the Philippine

Star, he also writes political and social commentary for the newsmagazine Newsbreak and the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine.

LIST OF WORKS Novel

 

Killing Time in a Warm Place, 1992

Soledad's Sister, 2008 Plays

  

Madilimang Gabi saLaot at Iba Pang MgaDulangLigawnaPag-Ibig, 1993 PagsabogngLiwanag/Aninag, Anino, 1996

AngButihingBabaengTimog/Mac Malicsi, TNT, 1997 Screenplays

  

TayongDalawa, 1994 Miguelito, 1995

Saranggola, 1999 Nonfiction

    

The Best of Barfly, 1997 The Lavas: A Filipino Family, 1999 Man Overboard, 2005 "Wash: Only a Bookkeeper", 2009

"Builder of Bridges: The Rudy Cuenca Story," 2010 Other books

  

(as editor) Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People , 1998 The Filipino Flag, 2004 Journeys with Light: The Vision of Jaime Zobel, 2005

KATRINA TUVERA She earned her BA in Humanities (Art History) and MA in Creative Writing from University of the Philippines-Diliman. She resides in Manila and currently divides her time between teaching literature and creative writing at De La Salle University-Taft and completing the sequel to her first novel, The Jupiter Effect. Her first novel, The Jupiter Effect, was published by Anvil Manila in 2006, and awarded the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award that year. She received her first National Book Award four years earlier with the publication of Testament and Other Stories, which included her Palanca-winning story. Tuvera has received writing fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Ledig House, Blue Mountain Center, Hedgebrook Retreat, and the MacDowell Colony in the United States, and Hawthornden International Retreat in Scotland. A former staff officer of the Philippine Senate s electoral tribunal, she is a lecturer at the Department of Literature, De La Salle University. Books: y y The Jupiter Effect Testament and Other Story

MIGUEL SYJUCO Miguel Syjuco born onNovember 17, 1976 is a Filipino writer from Iloilo, and the son of Augusto Syjuco Jr., the current representative of the second district of Iloilo. His first novel, Ilustrado, won the 2008 Palanca Awards Grand Prize for the Novel in English, the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2010 QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Miguel Syjuco, from Manila, is the author of Ilustrado, the debut novel which won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize as well as the Palanca Award, the Philippines' highest literary honour. The son of a political family, Miguel ran away to become a writer and has made a living as a medical guinea pig, B-movie extra, eBay power seller of ladies' handbags, and an assistant to a bookie at the horseraces. More recently, he has worked as a copy editor, freelancer and reviewer at major international publications. He has a master's degree in creative writing from ColumbiaUniversity and is completing a PhD in English literature from the University of Adelaide in Australia. Miguel's current literary writing explores the possibilities of narrative fiction and examines the complexities of a Third World society involved in reckless decay and hopeful progress. Some of his goals in life are to have everyone be able to pronounce his surname properly (see-hoo-coh) and to introduce the world to the storied Philippine culture that is far more than just domestic helpers, Imelda Marcos and the guy who shot Versace. His

second novel, I Was The President s Mistress, is slated for release in 2012. Syjuco now lives in Montreal, where he hosts a weekly radio column on books on CBC/Radio Canada. BOOKS: y y Ilustrado I Was The President s Mistress LOUIE MAR GANGCUAGCO Louie Mar Gangcuangco was born on March 26, 1987 in Mandaluyong City, Philippines. He finished his primary education in Montessori de San Juan (MSJ) as the batch valedictorian in 1999. He represented MSJ in several competitions, most notably the Walt Disney Interschool Leadership Competition where he won second runner-up.He graduated from Manila Science High School (Masci) in 2003 as the First Honorable Mention, First Meritorious Awardee, Best in English, and Best in Filipino. He has represented Masci in several interschool competitions, notably: National Inventor s Contest; Children s Museum and Library Incorporated Impromptu Speech Contest (second place); and The Philippine National Police Impromptu Speaking Contest (third place). He was the Science editor of The Nucleus, the school paper of Manila Science, which was awarded as the third best school paper in the Philippines during his editorship.He is two years accelerated in college under the Integrated Liberal Arts & Medicine (Intarmed) curriculum of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. As a freshman, Louie Mar, together with his teammates Lyle Gomez and AtrioLopez, won first place in the UP Manila Intercollegiate Debate Tournament, toppling down seniors from different colleges in the university. Even as a medical student, Louie finds time to go out and socialize. His night-out s has inspired him to write his novel, Orosa-Nakpil, Malate, which he self-published in March 2006 at age eighteen. His work was featured in the top-rating TV show, Sharon, in June of the same year. In August 2006, Louie Mar was awarded the Y Idol Award (Youth Idol Award) by Studio 23 s Y Speak. Later that month, the SentrongWikang Filipino conferred a SertipikongPagpapahalaga for Orosa-Nakpil, Malate. His phenomenal novel is endorsed by prominent people and institutions including the multi-awarded director, Jose Javier Joey Reyes, Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan (former DOH secretary) and Dr. Raul Destura of the National Institutes of Health Philippines. After one year of circulation, Orosa-Nakpil, Malate made it to the Best Sellers List released by National Book Store in April 2007. With him in the list are authors Mitch Albom of One More Day, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro of The Fifth Horseman, and Gabriel Garcia

Marquez of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The book landed on the Top 8 spot, overtaking international authors Steve Berry and Kiran Desai. In 2008, Louie Mar Gangcuangco published his second book, Gee, My Grades Are Terrific: A Student s Guide to Academic Excellence, a self-help book for students. Louie Mar passed the Straight Internal Medicine Internship in the Philippine General Hospital. He will be graduating from the UP College of Medicine in 2010.

BOOKS: y y Orosa-Nakpil, Malate Gee, My Grades Are Terrific: A Student s Guide to Academic Excellence

LUALHATI BAUTISTA She was born in Tondo, Manila on December 2, 1946 to parents Esteban Bautista and Gloria Torres. She studied in public schools, both in her elementary and high school years. She graduated from the Emilio Jacinto Elementary School in 1964 and from Torres High School in 1968. While studying in the Lyceum of the Philippines, she took the course of which she had no interest, and eventually stopped schooling. She started writing while she was still 16 years old, and was mainly influenced by her parents who were into composing and poem-writing. Her first stories were published in the magazine, Liwayway. She was the vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and the chair of the KapisananngmgaManunulatngNobelang Popular. She became a national fellow for fiction of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1986. Ms.Lualhati Bautista is known for her outstanding and award-winning novels. Among these, are Gapo (1980), Dekada '70 (1983), and Bata, Bata, Pa'noKaGinawa? (1984). All of these won the grand prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Aside from this, she has written numerous poems and short stories, some of which were compiled in an anthology. In addition to being a novelist, Lualhati Bautista is also a movie and television scriptwriter and a short story writer. Her first screenplay is Sakada (Seasonal Sugarcane Workers), a story written in 1972 that exposed the plight of Filipino peasants. Copies of the script were even confiscated by the military. As a writer, Lualhati Bautista received recognition from the Philippine's Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and then the SurianngWikangPambansa in 1987.

WORKS: y y y y y Gapo Dekada 70 Bata, Bata, Pa noKaGinawa Bulaklaksa City Jail Kung Mahahawi Man angUlap

F. SIONIL JOSE Born on December 3, 1924, F. Sionil Jose is one of the most widely-read Filipino writers in the English language. His works have been translated into 22 languages including Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, and Russian. His works are usually replete with social underpinnings on the class struggles as well as the colonialism in Philippine society. Even as a young kid, Jose already had a firm understanding about justice, corruption, inequality, and other social issues. He learned much from growing up in a somewhat destitute living condition in Barrio Cabugawan in Rosales, Pangasinan. Jose was of Ilocano descent; his family migrated to Pangasinan before his birth. To flee from poverty, his family traveled from Ilocos towards Cagayan Valley, through the Santa Fe Trail, bringing with them their lifetime possessions including uprooted molave posts of their old houses and their alsong, a stone mortar for pounding rice. After World War II, Jose tried to further develop his writing by taking up classes at the University of Santo Tomas, but he dropped out. Instead, he was swept by the whirlpool of the journalism world in Manila. He edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for writers. Even though he has received numerous awards and recognitions such as the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999, the Outstanding Fulbrighters Award for Literature in 1988, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts in 1980, and has been one of the most critically-acclaimed Filipino authors internationally, Jose is somehow underrated in the Philippines because of his authentic Filipino English and his anti-elite views.

NOVELS: y y y y y y y Po-on The Pretenders My Brother, My Executioner Mass Tree Gagamba Sin

BOB ONG This author is considered the mass-market mystery man, a publishing phenomenon whose blockbuster book sales are equaled only by the anonymity he maintains. He is Bob Ong not his real name the most unusual best-selling Filipino author you ve never met. His defunct BobongPinoy website received a People s Choice Philippine Web Award for Weird/Humor in 1998. His books are a favorite among Filipinos of all classes and among students even if they re not required reading. He has never appeared at any book launching, not even his own, nor on TV. That Ong has achieved such success in an age when celebrity is often a requisite of effective marketing is indicative of his following. But the fact that he has successfully kept his true identity a secret is even more astounding. At one time, it was rumored that award-winning poet Paolo Manalo is the real Bob Ong. The literary editor at the Philippines Free Press who teaches literature at the University of the Philippines denies this. I m flattered that people think I m Bob Ong but I m not him, he says. BOOKS: y y y y y y y y ABNKKBSNPLAko?! BakitBaligtadMagbasangLibroangmga Filipino AngPaboritongLibroniHudas AlamatngGubat Stainless Longganisa Macarthur Kapitan Sino AngmgaKaibiganni Mama Susan

GINA APOSTOL Gina Apostol studied at the University of the Philippines and at Johns Hopkins University. She was born in Manila, grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, and lives in New York. Her first novel, Bibliolepsy, won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Fiction in 1998. To write her novels, she has received fellowships from Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland; the George Bennett Fellowship of Phillips Exeter Academy; and the CivitellaRanieriCenter in Umbria, Italy. In 2009, Anvil Manila published The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, the first of a projected trilogy of novels on the Philippine revolutionary period. Apostol is currently working on Rizal s Sucesos, a novel set in London involving Jack the Ripper and a host of incubus-texts from the British Museum. WORKS: y y y Bibliolepsy Charlie Chan is Dead 2 The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

LAKAMBINI A. SITOY Lakambini A. Sitoy has published two collections of short stories: Mens Rea and Other Stories, published by Anvil Manila in 1999 and winner of a Manila Critics Circle National Book Award that year, and Jungle Planet, published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2006. Her first novel, Sweet Haven, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008. She received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom in 2003. Her short stories have appeared in Philippine magazines and anthologies, and in Wake, an anthology published in Britain to benefit victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, and Ansigter, an anthology of Southeast Asian short stories published by ForlagetHjulet in Copenhagen in 2008. As a journalist, Sitoy served as lifestyle editor and columnist for the Manila Times. She has won nine Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards. WORKS: y y y Sweet Haven Mens Rea and Other Stories Jungle Planet

FH BATACAN The leading proponent of Philippine literary crime fiction, FH Batacan or Maria Felisa H. Batacan is a Filipino journalist who has been based in Singapore since 2000. Before moving to Singapore, she did current affairs work for Philippine television networks. Prior to a career in journalism, she spent nearly a decade working in a government intelligence agency. Her first novel Smaller and Smaller Circles won the Palanca Award for the Novel in 2001, was published by the UP Press in 2002, and received both the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award and the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award. Batacan studied classical guitar for seven years at the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music and the Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music. WORKS: y Smaller and Smaller Circles