Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzales

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.

Proclaimed as the National Artist of the Philippines for Literature in 1997.

He was born on 8 September 1915 in Romblon, Philippines. Gonzalez was admired for

preserving Filipino cultural origins through his short stories and other writings, which were translated into numerous languages. He

was recognized as "the Philippines' foremost creative writer in English" by the campus news magazine "Cross Currents" when he

came to UCLA(
University of California, Los Angeles) to teach a graduate course on Philippine and
Filipino American Literature. He died on November 28 1999 at
the age of 84. As a National Artist,
Gonzalez was honored with a state funeral at the Libingan ng mga Bayani

Novel: The Winds of April (1941) - describes the aspirations of the author
from birth to young adulthood, it captures the hopes of a whole people on
the verge of independence from the United States

Short Fiction: Seven Hills Away (1947) - seem more like sketches,
reproducing the quiet, sometimes desperate, static lifestyle of the
Philippine kainginero

Essays: A Novel of Justice: Selected Essays 1968–1994 (1996) – The essays

compiled in “The Novel of Justice: Selected Essays 1968-1994” embody
the thoughtful and ruminative quality of N.V.M.’s work in the last decades of
his illustrious writing and teaching career. Thirteen thought pieces fixated
on an artist’s meditations on his craft: form, readership, voice, point of view,
even critiques of other writers.

Carlos P. Romulo

his multifaceted career spanned 50 years of public service as an educator, soldier, university
president, journalist, and diplomat. It is common knowledge that he was the first Asian president
of the United Nations General Assembly, then Philippine Ambassador to Washington, D.C., and
later minister of foreign affairs.
Essentially though, Romulo was very much into writing: he was a reporter at 16, a newspaper
editor by the age of 20, and a publisher at 32. He was the only Asian to win America’s coveted
Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for a series of articles predicting the outbreak of World War II.
Romulo, in all, wrote and published 18 books, a range of literary works which included The
United (novel), I Walked with Heroes (autobiography), I Saw the Fall of the
Philippines, Mother America, I See the Philippines Rise (war-time memoirs).

Carlos P. Romulo (1899-1985) was an author and the foremost diplomat of

the Philippines. He was the only Filipino journalist to win the Pulitzer Prize
and the first Asian to serve as president of the UN General Assembly (1949).
He also gained prominence as America's most trusted Asian spokesman. He
died on December 15 1985 at the age of 87 in Manila and was buried in the
Heroes’ Cemetery or Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Novel: The United (1951) -

I Walked with Heroes (1961) - I Walked with Heroes is an

autobiographical book. It included Romulo's memories of his parents and
the first time he met the Americans in the person of soldiers stationed
in Camiling, his native town in Tarlac. Romulo also narrated his life
in Manila when he was both a morning-time student and an evening-time
news reporter. A part of the book mentioned how Romulo was praised by
then President of the Philippine Senate Manuel L. Quezon after writing a
news item against Quezon's political opponents The book revealed
Romulo's "unfailing faith in mankind".[1][2]
I Saw the Fall of the Philippines (1942) - first-hand description of the
Japanese attack and of the gallant defense of the islands against hopeless
odds on Bataan.
Mother America (1943) - he discussed the relations between the Occident
and Orient -- politically and socially. Though not uncritical of American
behavior in the Philippines, he finds it far superior to that of Britain,
Holland and France in Asia. Some may feel that his criticisms of the latter
Powers are occasionally undiscriminating
I See the Philippines Rise (1946) - the reactions of a leading Filipino
editor to the liberation of his homeland