Cirilo F.

Bautista is a poet, fictionist and essayist with exceptional achievements and significant contributions to
the development of the country’s literary arts. He is acknowledged by peers and critics, and the nation at large as
the foremost writer of his generation.

Throughout his career that spans more than four decades, he has established a reputation for fine and profound
artistry; his books, lectures, poetry readings and creative writing workshops continue to influence his peers and
generations of young writers.

As a way of bringing poetry and fiction closer to the people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to
develop their creative talent, Bautista has been holding regular funded and unfunded workshops throughout the
country. In his campus lecture circuits, Bautista has updated students and student-writers on literary
developments and techniques.

As a teacher of literature, Bautista has realized that the classroom is an important training ground for Filipino
writers. In De La Salle University, he was instrumental in the formation of the Bienvenido Santos Creative Writing
Center. He was also the moving spirit behind the founding of the Philippine Literary Arts Council in 1981, the Iligan
National Writers Workshop in 1993, and the Baguio Writers Group.

Thus, Bautista continues to contribute to the development of Philippine literature: as a writer, through his
significant body of works; as a teacher, through his discovery and encouragement of young writers in workshops
and lectures; and as a critic, through his essays that provide insights into the craft of writing and correctives to
misconceptions about art.

Major works: Summer Suns (1963), Words and Battlefields (1998), The Trilogy of Saint

Lazarus (2001), Galaw ng Asoge (2003).

Cirilo F. Bautista, poet, fictionist, critic, and writer of nonfiction, was born in 1941. He received his degrees in AB
Literature from the University of Santo Tomas (magna cum laude, 1963), MA Literature from St. Louis University,
Baguio City (magna cum laude, 1968), and Doctor of Arts in Language and Literature from De La Salle University-
Manila (1990). He received a fellowship to attend the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa
(1968-1969) and was awarded an honorary degree--the only Filipino to have been so honored there.

He is a co-founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) and a member of the Manila Critics
Circle, Philippine Center of International PEN and the Philippine Writers Academy . His awards include the Palanca,
Free Press, National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle, Gawad Balagtas, the Pablo Ro man Prize for the
Novel, and the highest accolades from the City of Manila, Quezon City, and Iligan City. Bautista was hailed in 1993
as Makata ng Taon by the Komisyon ng mga Wika ng Pilipinas , and t he last part of his epic trilogy The Trilogy of
Saint Lazarus , entitled Sunlight on Broken Stones , won the Centennial Prize for the epic in 1998. 

Bautista's works include Boneyard Breaking , Sugat ng Salita , The Archipelago , Telex Moon , Summer Suns , Charts
, The Cave and Other Poems , Kirot ng Kataga , and Bullets and Roses: The Poetry of Amado V. Hernandez . His
novel Galaw ng Asoge was published by UST Press in 2004. In addition to being a Professor of Literature in DLSU-
Manila, Bautista is also a columnist and literary editor of the Philippine Panorama.
Source:http://www.panitikan.com.ph/authors/b/cfbautista.htm
Nick Joaquin
National Artist for Literature (1976)
(May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004)
“Before 1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino; after 1565 we can be nothing but Filipino.”
― Culture and History, 1988

Nick Joaquin, is regarded by many as the most distinguished Filipino writer in English writing so variedly and so
well about so many aspects of the Filipino. Nick Joaquin has also enriched the English language with critics coining
“Joaquinesque” to describe his baroque Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of English based on
Filipinisms. Aside from his handling of language, Bienvenido Lumbera writes that Nick Joaquin’s significance in
Philippine literature involves his exploration of the Philippine colonial past under Spain and his probing into the
psychology of social changes as seen by the young, as exemplified in stories such as Doña Jeronima, Candido’s
Apocalypse and The Order of Melchizedek. Nick Joaquin has written plays, novels, poems, short stories and
essays including reportage and journalism. As a journalist, Nick Joaquin uses the nome de guerre Quijano de
Manila but whether he is writing literature or journalism, fellow National Artist Francisco Arcellana opines that “it
is always of the highest skill and quality”.
Among his voluminous works are The Woman Who Had Two Navels, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino,
Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young, The Ballad of the Five Battles, Rizal in Saga, Almanac for
Manileños, Cave and Shadows.

Nick Joaquin died April 29, 2004.

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)  Stories for Groovy Kids (1979) 
Selected Stories (1962)  Almanac for Manileñ os (1979) 
La Naval de Manila and Other Essays (1964)  Manila: Sin City and Other Chronicles (1980) 
The Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966)  Language of the Street and Other Essays (1980) 
Tropical Gothic (1972)  Reportage on the Marcoses (1979, 1981)
The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal (1976)  The awards and prizes he has received include:
Reportage on Crime (1977)  Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1961); 
Reportage on Lovers (1977)  Stonehill Award for the Novel (1960); 
Nora Aunor and Other Profiles (1977)  first prize, Philippines Free Press Short Story Contest
Ronnie Poe and Other Silhouettes (1977)  (1949); 
Amalia Fuentes and Other Etchings (1977)  first prize, Palance Memorial Award (1957-58); 
Gloria Diaz and Other Delineations (1977)  Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll (1940); 
Doveglion and Other Cameos (1977)  and the National Artist Award (1976).
A Question of Heroes (1977) 
Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez
National Artist for Literature (1997)
(September 8, 1915 – November 28, 1999)
Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, better known as N.V.M. Gonzalez, fictionist, essayist, poet, and teacher,
articulated the Filipino spirit in rural, urban landscapes. Among the many recognitions, he won the First
Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940, received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1960 and the
Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in 1990. The awards attest to his triumph in appropriating the English
language to express, reflect and shape Philippine culture and Philippine sensibility. He became U.P.’s
International-Writer-In-Residence and a member of the Board of Advisers of the U.P. Creative Writing
Center. In 1987, U.P. conferred on him the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, its highest academic
recognition.

Major works of N.V.M Gonzalez include the following: The Winds of April, Seven Hills Away, Children
of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories, The Bamboo Dancers, Look Stranger, on this Island
Now, Mindoro and Beyond: Twenty -One Stories, The Bread of Salt and Other Stories, Work on the
Mountain, The Novel of Justice: Selected Essays 1968-1994, A Grammar of Dreams and Other
Stories.
Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez (guhn-ZAH-lehs), who sometimes adopted the surname spelling
“Gonzales,” was born into a family of educators, his mother being a teacher and his father a school
supervisor. When he was four years old, Gonzalez moved with his family to the barrio of Wasig in
Mindoro. This locale had a seminal influence on his writing, as the titles of his works “Hunger in Barok,”
“Life and Death in a Mindoro Kaingin,” and Mindoro and Beyond suggest. From 1927 to 1930, Gonzalez
stayed with aunts and uncles in Romblon, his last year being spent at Mindoro High School.

Gonzalez failed his University of the Philippines entrance examination, but in 1949 he became the first to
teach college courses there without holding a degree. In 1933 Gonzalez visited Manila and met famed
Commonwealth period president Manuel Quezon y Molina but quickly returned to Mindoro. The next
year he went back to Manila, where he joined the Veronicans, certainly the finest literary organization in
the pre-World War II Philippines, noteworthy for such luminaries as Manuel A. Viray among its members.
In that same year, Gonzalez entered an essay commemorating Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to Calapan in a
students’ literary contest (Gonzalez did two years of college studies at National University and Manila
Law College). Noted poet and literary critic A. E. Litiatco awarded Gonzalez the five-peso first prize. This
was the first of numerous awards, prizes, and other honors Gonzalez garnered.

Among the most prestigious were an honorable mention in the First Commonwealth Literary Contest
(1940) for The Winds of April; Rockefeller grants in 1949-1950, 1952, and 1964; a Republic Award of
Merit (1954), and a Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1960) for The Bamboo Dancers; a National Artist
Award for Literature (1997); and a Philippines Centennial Award for Literature (1998).
Although his renowned works are in English, the language was acquired; Hiligaynofl is the native tongue
of Romblon. He also was accomplished in Tagalog, as his third prize in the 1943 Liwayway Short Story
Contest for “Lunsod, Nayon, at Dagat-dagatan” (city, town, and lake) attests.
Virgilio S. Almario
National Artist for Literature (2003)

Virgilio S. Almario, also known as Rio Alma, is a poet, literary historian and critic, who has revived and reinvented
traditional Filipino poetic forms, even as he championed modernist poetics. In 34 years, he has published 12 books
of poetry, which include the seminal Makinasyon and Peregrinasyon, and the landmark trilogy Doktrinang
Anakpawis, Mga Retrato at Rekwerdo and Muli, Sa Kandungan ng Lupa. In these works, his poetic voice soared
from the lyrical to the satirical to the epic, from the dramatic to the incantatory, in his often severe examination of
the self, and the society.
He has also redefined how the Filipino poetry is viewed and paved the way for the discussion of the same in his 10
books of criticisms and anthologies, among which are Ang Makata sa Panahon ng Makina, Balagtasismo versus
Modernismo,Walong Dekada ng Makabagong Tula Pilipino, Mutyang Dilim and Barlaan at Josaphat.
Many Filipino writers have come under his wing in the literary workshops he founded –the Galian sa Arte at Tula
(GAT) and the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo (LIRA). He has also long been involved with children’s
literature through the Aklat Adarna series, published by his Children’s Communication Center. He has been a
constant presence as well in national writing workshops and galvanizes member writers as chairman emeritus of
the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).
He headed the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as Executive Director, (from 1998 to 2001) ably
steering the Commission towards its goals.
But more than anything else, what Almario accomplished was that he put a face to the Filipino writer in the
country, one strong face determinedly wielding a pen into untruths, hypocrisy, injustice, among others.

Virgilio S. Almario
National Artist for Literature (2003)
Virgilio S. Almario, also known as Rio Alma, is a poet, literary historian and critic, who has revived and reinvented
traditional Filipino poetic forms, even as he championed modernist poetics. In 34 years, he has published 12 books
of poetry, which include the seminal Makinasyon and Peregrinasyon, and the landmark trilogy Doktrinang
Anakpawis, Mga Retrato at Rekwerdo and Muli, Sa Kandungan ng Lupa. In these works, his poetic voice soared
from the lyrical to the satirical to the epic, from the dramatic to the incantatory, in his often severe examination of
the self, and the society.
He has also redefined how the Filipino poetry is viewed and paved the way for the discussion of the same in his 10
books of criticisms and anthologies, among which are Ang Makata sa Panahon ng Makina, Balagtasismo versus
Modernismo,Walong Dekada ng Makabagong Tula Pilipino, Mutyang Dilim and Barlaan at Josaphat.
Many Filipino writers have come under his wing in the literary workshops he founded –the Galian sa Arte at Tula
(GAT) and the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo (LIRA). He has also long been involved with children’s
literature through the Aklat Adarna series, published by his Children’s Communication Center. He has been a
constant presence as well in national writing workshops and galvanizes member writers as chairman emeritus of
the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).
He headed the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as Executive Director, (from 1998 to 2001) ably
steering the Commission towards its goals.
But more than anything else, what Almario accomplished was that he put a face to the Filipino writer in the
country, one strong face determinedly wielding a pen into untruths, hypocrisy, injustice, among others.

Virgilio S. Almario
National Artist for Literature (2003)
Virgilio S. Almario, also known as Rio Alma, is a poet, literary historian and critic, who has revived and reinvented
traditional Filipino poetic forms, even as he championed modernist poetics. In 34 years, he has published 12 books
of poetry, which include the seminal Makinasyon and Peregrinasyon, and the landmark trilogy Doktrinang
Anakpawis, Mga Retrato at Rekwerdo and Muli, Sa Kandungan ng Lupa. In these works, his poetic voice soared
from the lyrical to the satirical to the epic, from the dramatic to the incantatory, in his often severe examination of
the self, and the society.
He has also redefined how the Filipino poetry is viewed and paved the way for the discussion of the same in his 10
books of criticisms and anthologies, among which are Ang Makata sa Panahon ng Makina, Balagtasismo versus
Modernismo,Walong Dekada ng Makabagong Tula Pilipino, Mutyang Dilim and Barlaan at Josaphat.
Many Filipino writers have come under his wing in the literary workshops he founded –the Galian sa Arte at Tula
(GAT) and the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo (LIRA). He has also long been involved with children’s
literature through the Aklat Adarna series, published by his Children’s Communication Center. He has been a
constant presence as well in national writing workshops and galvanizes member writers as chairman emeritus of
the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).
He headed the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as Executive Director, (from 1998 to 2001) ably
steering the Commission towards its goals.
But more than anything else, what Almario accomplished was that he put a face to the Filipino writer in the
country, one strong face determinedly wielding a pen into untruths, hypocrisy, injustice, among others.

Francisco Sionil José’s novels, short stories and non-fiction works highlight the social underpinnings, class
struggles and colonial history of Filipino society.

He is best known for his epic work, The Rosales Saga – five novels encompassing a hundred years of Philippine
history, painting a vivid documentary of Filipino life.

Since starting his writing career in 1949, José has written more than 35 books, translated into more than 20
languages and published worldwide. He has also been involved with international cultural organizations, notably
International P.E.N., the world association of poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists, whose Philippine Center
he founded in 1958.

José has worked as a journalist, and has founded a bookshop, publishing house and art gallery. In 1966, he
established Solidarity, a monthly magazine of “current affairs, ideas and the arts,” whose contributors included
Southeast Asia’s leading writers, poets, statesmen, scholars and political activists. 

According to Prof. Edwin Thumboo of the National University of Singapore, “Ever the visionary, Frankie saw
Southeast Asia as a region well ahead of the politicians, political scientists and economists. Solidarity did more to
advance the understanding of Southeast Asia and the sense of it as a region, than any other journal.”

Recognitions of José’s literary works and his influence on the Philippines and Asia include the Ramon Magsaysay
Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Arts (1980), Philippine National Artist (2001), and the Pablo Neruda
Centennial Award (2004), and Officer in the French Order of Arts and Letters (2014). 

Now in his nineties, he continues to be a prolific writer and relentless voice against social injustice and national
amnesia. Almost daily, he still climbs the three flights of steps to his writing alcove at the Solidaridad Bookshop in
Manila.   

F. Sionil Jose’s writings since the late 60s, when taken collectively can best be described as epic. Its sheer volume
puts him on the forefront of Philippine writing in English. But ultimately, it is the consistent espousal of the
aspirations of the Filipino–for national sovereignty and social justice–that guarantees the value of his oeuvre.

In the five-novel masterpiece, the Rosales saga, consisting of The Pretenders, Tree, My Brother, My
Executioner, Mass, and Po-on, he captures the sweep of Philippine history while simultaneously narrating the
lives of generations of the Samsons whose personal lives intertwine with the social struggles of the nation. Because
of their international appeal, his works, including his many short stories, have been published and translated into
various languages.

F. Sionil Jose is also a publisher, lecturer on cultural issues, and the founder of the Philippine chapter of the
international organization PEN. He was bestowed 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.