Performance Task: # 3 Writing a Biography

Dalisay has published nearly 30 books of his stories, plays, and essays, with six of those
books receiving the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle. More than 20 of
his screenplays have also been produced. In 1998, he was named to the Cultural Center of
the Philippines (CCP) Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most accomplished Filipino
artists of the past century.

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 newspaper reporter. 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 (Imaginative Writing) 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 PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee in 1991 as a Fulbright scholar

Among his literary distinctions, he has won 16 Carlos Palanca Awards in five genres
(entering the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000), five Cultural Center of the Philippines awards
for playwriting, and Famas, Urian, Star and Catholic Film awards and citations for his
screenplays. He was named one of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of 1993 for his
creative writing by the Philippine Jaycees. In 2005, he was given the Premio Cervara di
Roma in Italy for his literary achievements. In 2007, his second novel, Soledad’s Sister, was
shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong; it has since been
published in Italian, Spanish, and French editions. In 2011, the Arizona-based Schaffner
Press published his two novels under the title In Flight: Two Novels of the Philippines; the
book has won a Silver Nautilus Prize in the US in the multicultural/indigenous category.

Dr Jose Dalisay Jr served as a Pacific Leadership Fellow with the Center for Emerging and
Pacific Economies at the School of International Relations and Philippine writing, according
to Butch Dalisay. Nov 2011 At the Singapore Writers Festival, Dalisay talked about what
Philippine writing is up In the essay.