Francisco "Franz" Arcellana (Zacarias Eugene Francisco Quino Arcellana) was a Filipino writer, poet, essayist, critic, journalist

and teacher. He was

born in aka Frank V. Sta. Cruz, Manila.

He is the fourth of 18 children of Jose Arcellana y Cabaneiro and Epifanio Quino. He was married to Emerenciana Yuvienco with whom he has six
children, one of whom, Juaniyo is an essayist, poet and fictionist. He received his first schooling in Tondo. The idea of writing occurred to him at the
Tondo Intermediate School but it was at the Manila West High School (later Torres High School) that he took up writing actively as staff member of
The Torres Torch, the school organ.

In 1932 Arcellana entered the University of the Philippines (UP) as a pre-medicine student and graduated in 1939 with a bachelor of philosophy in
degree. In his junior year, mainly because of the publication of his “trilogy of the turtles” in the Literary Apprentice, Arcellana was invited to join
the UP Writers Club by Manuel Arguilla – who at that time was already a campus literary figure. In 1934, he edited and published Expression, a
quarterly of experimental writing. It caught the attention of Jose Garcia Villa who started a correspondence with Arcellana. It also spawned the
Veronicans, a group of 13 pre-WWII who rebelled against traditional forms and themes in Philippine literature.

Arcellana went on to medical school after receiving his bachelor's degree while holding jobs in Herald Midweek Magazine, where his weekly
column “Art and Life” (later retitled “Life and Letters”) appeared, and in Philcross, the publication of the Philippine Red Cross. The war stopped his
schooling. After the war, he continued working in media and publishing and began a career in the academe. He was manager of the International
News Service and the editor of This Week. He joined the UP Department of English and Comparative Literature and served as adviser of the
Philippine Collegian and director of the UP Creative Writing Center, 1979- 1982. Under a Rockefeller Foundation grant he became a fellow in
creative writing, 1956- 1957, at the University of Iowa and Breadloaf Writers' Conference.

In 1932 Arcellana published his first story. “The Man Who Could Be Poe” in Graphic while still a student at Torres High School. The following year
two of his short stories, “Death is a Factory” and “Lina,” were included in Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll. During the 1930's, which he calls his most
productive period, he wrote his most significant stories including, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” cited in 1938 by Villa as the year's best. He also
began writing poetry at this time, many of them appearing in Philippine Collegian, Graphic and Herald Midweek Magazine.

He is considered an important progenitor of the modern Filipino short story in English. Arcellana pioneered the development of the short story as a
lyrical prose-poetic form within Filipino literature. His works are now often taught in tertiary-level-syllabi in the Philippines.

Some of his works have been translated into Tagalog, Malaysian, Italian, German and Russian, and many have been anthologized. Two major
collections of his works are: Selected Stories, 1962, and The Francisco Arcellana Sampler, 1990. He also edited the Philippine PEN Anthology of
Short Stories, 1962, and Fifteen Stories: Story Masters 5, 1973. Arcellana credits Erskine Caldwell and Whit Burnett as influences. From 1928 to
1939, 14 of his short stories were included in Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll. His short story “The Flowers of May” won second prize in 1951 Don
Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature. Another short story, “Wing of Madness,” placed second in the Philippines Free Press literary contest
in 1953, He also received the first award in art criticism from the Art Association of the Philippines in 1954, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan
award from the city government of Manila in 1981, and the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for English fiction from the Unyon ng mga
Manunulat sa Pilipino (UMPIL) in 1988. He was conferred a doctorate in humane letters, honoris causa, by the UP in 1989. He was proclaimed
National Artist in Literature in 1990 – L.R. Lacuesta and R.C. Lucero

Francisco Arcellana's Works:

Selected Stories (1962)

Poetry and Politics: The State of Original Writing in English in the Philippines Today (1977)
The Francisco Arcellana Sampler (1990).

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Francisco Arcellana Poems

 Prayer
Close all open things, Lord. Open all closed things.
 The Other Woman
I have watched her in stillness, how still and white and long. I have followed her about with my eyes, how silent and swift and strong.

 I Wait For You

I wait for you ready to leap at you from every corner at every turn
 To Touch You
TO touch you to kiss you to press against you anywhere

Nick Joaquin
Poet, fictionist, essayist, biographer, playwright, and National Artist, decided to quit after three years of secondary
education at the Mapa High School. Classroom work simply bored him. He thought his teachers didn't know enough. He
discovered that he could learn more by reading books on his own, and his father's library had many of the books he cared
to read. He read all the fiction he could lay his hands on, plus the lives of saints, medieval and ancient history, the poems
of Walter de la Mare and Ruben Dario. He knew his Bible from Genesis to Revelations. Of him actress-professor Sarah K.
Joaquin once wrote: "Nick is so modest, so humble, so unassuming . . .his chief fault is his rabid and insane love for
books. He likes long walks and wornout shoes. Before Intramuros was burned down, he used to make the rounds of the
churches when he did not have anything to do or any place to go. Except when his work interferes, he receives daily
communion." He doesn't like fish, sports, and dressing up. He is a bookworm with a gift of total recall.

He was born "at about 6:00 a.m." in Paco, Manila, on 04 May 1917. The moment he emerged from his mother's womb, the baby Nicomedes--
or Onching, to his kin--made a "big howling noise" to announce his arrival. That noise still characterizes his arrival at literary soirees. He started
writing short stories, poems, and essays in 1934. Many of them were published in Manila magazines, and a few found their way into foreign
journals. His essay La Naval de Manila (1943) won in a contest sponsored by the Dominicans whose university, the UST, awarded him an A.A.
(Associate in Arts) certificate on the strength of his literary talents. The Dominicans also offered him a two-year scholarship to the Albert
College in Hong Kong, and he accepted. Unable to follow the rigid rules imposed upon those studying for the priesthood, however, he left the
seminary in 1950.

He is included in Heart of the Island (1947) and Philippine Poetry Annual: 1947 - 1949 (1950), both edited by Manuel A. Viray.

The following are Joaquin's published books:

Prose and Poems (1952)

The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961)
Selected Stories (1962)
La Naval de Manila and Other Essays (1964)
The Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966)
Tropical Gothic (1972)
The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal (1976)
Reportage on Crime (1977)
Reportage on Lovers (1977)
Nora Aunor and Other Profiles (1977)
Ronnie Poe and Other Silhouettes (1977)
Amalia Fuentes and Other Etchings (1977)
Gloria Diaz and Other Delineations (1977)
Doveglion and Other Cameos (1977)
A Question of Heroes (1977)
Stories for Groovy Kids (1979)
Almanac for Manileños (1979)
Manila: Sin City and Other Chronicles (1980)
Language of the Street and Other Essays (1980)
Reportage on the Marcoses (1979, 1981)

The awards and prizes he has received include:

Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1961);

Stonehill Award for the Novel (1960);
first prize, Philippines Free Press Short Story Contest (1949);
first prize, Palance Memorial Award (1957-58);
Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll (1940);
and the National Artist Award (1976).

From the jacket of A Question of Heroes: "Along with the author's recent 'culture as History,' [this book is] a gentle polemical inquiry into
thecharacter of the Filipinos' national culture, these essays constitute perhaps the most coherent picture of the revolutionary heritage most
Filipinos claim for themselves today."

"Nick Joaquin is, in my opinion," wrote Jose Garcia Villa, "the only Filipino writer with a real imagination--that imagination of power and depth
and great metaphysical seeing--and which knows how to express itself in great language, who writes poetry, and who reveals behind his
writings a genuine first-rate mind."

"Joaquin has proven the truism," said Alejandro R. Roces, "that to understand the present, you have to first know the past. And by presenting
the present as a continuation of the future, he has traced the roots of our rotting society to our moral confusion. He is doing for the
Philippines what Faulkner has done for the [U.S.] South."

"Nick Joaquin," said Manuel A. Viray, "a gifted stylist, has used his sensitive style and his exciting evocations in portraying the peculiar evil,
social and moral, we see around us and in proving that passion as well as reason can never be quenched."

After the death of his father, Joaquin went to live with his brother Enrique ("Ike"). With the encouragement of his sister-in-law, Sarah, he
submitted a story to the Herald Mid-Week Magazine and it was published. He soon sent out more stories to other magazines. In 1949
"Guardia de Honor" was declared the best story of the year in the Philipines Free Press.

He was designated manager of his sister-in-law Sarah's dramatic organization after WWII. Later he joined the Philippines Free Press as
proofreader and subsequently became a rewrite man. He wrote feature articles he bylined as "Quijano de Manila." They were a great hit.
Soon they appeared regularly and Quijano de Manila became one of the most famous journalists in the country.

Because of labor problems in the Free Press, he left and edited Asia-Philippine Leader. He had been with the Free Press for 27 years (1950-77).
Nicomedes "Onching" M. Joaquin, today just "Nick," who came into the world howling, lives quietly in San Juan del Monte writing, among
others, kiddie books. And "he survives on sheer genius," remarks one admirer of his.