NATIONAL ARTISTS

FOR
LITERATURE
 Philippineliterature is a rich group of literary works
that has developed along with the country’s history.
Long before the arrival of Western influences, early
Filipinos already have stories to tell to younger
generations.

 ThePhilippines has a rich collection of fables,

legends, and myths from different regions. The
babaylan, the early healers, used chants to please the
supernatural beings or spirits to bestow good health
and fortune in the home and the fields.
 When the Spaniards came in the 16th century, they
introduced Christianity to the islands and used literature to
colonize the country. During the time of the Americans,
English was introduced and Filipinos have grown adept in
the usage of the language. Today, contemporary writers are
expanding the horizon of reality and imagination in their
works to reflect the Filipino spirit.
 Philippine literature is diverse, although some of the
famous literary works focus on the country’s postcolonial
heritage, politics, and modern traditions. Filipinos must
recognize and give importance to the people behind the
development of Philippine literature.
 AMADO V. HERNANDEZ
 National Artist for Literature (1973)
(September 13, 1903 – May 24, 1970)
 Amado V. Hernandez, poet, playwright, and novelist, is among
the Filipino writers who practiced “committed art”. He is well
known for his disapproval of social injustices in the country. In
his view, the function of the writer is to act as the conscience
of society and to affirm the greatness of the human spirit in
the face of inequity and oppression. He was later imprisoned
for his participation in the communist movement. His
novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit, first written by Hernandez
while in prison, is the first Filipino socio-political novel that
exposes the ills of the society as evident in the agrarian
problems of the 50s.
 Other notable works include the following: Bayang Malaya,
Isang Dipang Langit, Luha ng Buwaya, Tudla at Tudling:
Katipunan ng mga Nalathalang Tula 1921-1970, Langaw sa
Isang Basong Gatas at Iba Pang Kwento, and Magkabilang
Mukha ng Isang Bagol at Iba Pang Akda.

 He was married to another national artist Filipino Actress

Atang de la Rama.
 JOSE GARCIA VILLA
 National Artist for Literature (1973)
(August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997)
 Jose Garcia Villa is considered as one of the finest contemporary
poets regardless of race or language. Villa, who lived in Singalong,
Manila, introduced the reversed consonance rime scheme, including
the comma poems that made full use of the punctuation mark in an
innovative, poetic way. If you will study Villa’s work, you will notice
his use of comma in every word. Villa described this style as similar
to Seurat’s architectonic and measured pointillism. Pointillism is a
painting technique in which the artist uses small, distinct dots of pure
color to create an image. The first of his poems “Have Come, Am
Here” received critical recognition when it appeared in New York in
1942 that, soon enough, honors and fellowships were heaped on him:
Guggenheim, Bollingen, the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Awards.
 He used Doveglion (Dove, Eagle, Lion) as penname, the very
characters he attributed to himself, and the same ones explored
by e.e. cummings in the poem he wrote for Villa (Doveglion,
Adventures in Value). Villa is also known for the tartness of his
tongue. Villa’s works have been collected into the following
books: Footnote to Youth,Many Voices, Poems by
Doveglion, Poems 55, Poems in Praise of Love: The Best
Love Poems of Jose Garcia Villa as Chosen By
Himself, Selected Stories,The Portable Villa, The Essential
Villa, Mir-i-nisa, Storymasters 3: Selected Stories from
Footnote to Youth, 55 Poems: Selected and Translated into
Tagalog by Hilario S. Francia.
 NICK JOAQUIN
National Artist for Literature (1976)
(May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004)
 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. His first short story dealt with
the vaudeville of Manila, “The Sorrows of Vaudeville”,
published in 1937 by the Sunday Tribune Magazine. He worked
as a journalist for most of his life, pioneering literary journalism.
Literary journalism is the reportage of actual events that employs
literary techniques.

(Vaudeville is a light often comic theatrical piece frequently combining

pantomime, dialogue, dancing, and songs)
 . 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, An Elegy in Three Scenes, and A Life for the
Student Fans.
 CARLOS P. ROMULO

National Artist for Literature (1982)

(January 14, 1899 – December 15, 1985)

 Carlos P. Romulo was an envoy, statesman, soldier,

correspondent, writer, and the founder of the Boy Scouts of the
Philippines. 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). His other books include his memoirs
of his many years’ affiliations with United Nations
(UN), Forty Years: A Third World Soldier at the UN,
and The Philippine Presidents, his oral history of his
experiences serving all the Philippine presidents.
 FRANCISCO ARCELLANA
 National Artist for Literature (1990)
(September 6, 1916 – August 1, 2002)
 Francisco Arcellana, writer, poet, essayist, critic, journalist and
teacher, is one of the greatest Filipino poets in his generation and
is the most important progenitors of the modern Filipino short
story in English. He pioneered the development of the short story
as a lyrical prose-poetic form. He studied in Tondo Intermediate
School. However, it was the Manila West High School (which
was later named the Florentino Torres High School) that he took
up his writing seriously and became a staff member of The
Torres Torch, the school organ.
 While still a student at Florentino Torres High School, he wrote
his first story, “The Man Who Would Be Poe”. Arcellana’s
exceptional works in fiction include “Death in a Factory,” “A
Clown Remembers”, and Divided by Two”. Some of his poems
include “The Other Woman”, “To Touch You”, and “I Touched
Her”, which are among others are now part of the secondary -
and tertiary-level syllabi in the country.
 N.V.M. 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. In 1948, he received a
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, which allowed him to study in
Standford University and Columbia University. 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 (1941), A Season of Grace (1956), and The
Bamboo Dancers (1988). His exemplary works have been
published in several languages including Filipino, English,
Chinese, German, Russian, and Indonesian.
 CARLOS L. QUIRINO
 National Artist for Historical Literature (1997)
(January 14, 1910 – May 20, 1999)
 Carlos Quirino, biographer, has the distinction of having
written one of the earliest biographies of Jose Rizal titled The
Great Malayan. He was the first filipino to be recognized as the
National Artist in Historical Literature in 1997. Quirino obtained
his journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin at
Madison in 1931. He wrote Man of Destiny (1935), a biography
about the second president of the Philippines, Manuel L.
Quezon. This book is a valuable addition to Philippine literature,
as its subject was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant leaders
of the country.
 Quirino then spent some of his years working as an assistant to
President Elpidio Quirino, who helped him study law until he
passed the bar in 1940. Most of Quirino’s topics covered war,
politics, art, business, and agriculture.
 EDITH L. TIEMPO
 National Artist for Literature (1999)
(April 22, 1919 – August 21, 2011)
 Edith L. Tiempo, poet, fictionist, teacher and literary critic is one
of the finest Filipino writers in English whose works are
characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of
craftsmanship and insight. Born on April 22, 1919 in Bayombong,
Nueva Vizcaya, her poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of
significant experiences as revealed, in two of her much
anthologized pieces, “The Little Marmoset” and “Bonsai”. She
received the greatest honor as a National Artist for Literature in
1999 and a recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for
Literature for the short story “The Black Monkey” in 1951.
 Together with her late husband, Edilberto K. Tiempo, she
founded and directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop
in Dumaguete City. The Silliman University National Writers
Workshop is Asia’s longest running writer’s workshop held in
the city of Dumaguete. A writers workshop is devoted to
helping emerging writers cultivate their craft. Her works
include the following novels: A Blade of Fern (1978), The
Native Coast (1979), and The Alien Corn (1992). Her poetry
include The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems (1966) and
The Charmer’s Box and Other Poems (1993).
 F. SIONIL JOSE
 National Artist for Literature (2001)
 Francisco Sionel Jose is a prolific Filipino writer whose works have
been translated in more than 20 languages. His literary works
represent the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism
in the society.
 One of his popular novels, The Pretenders, is a story of one man’s
separation from his poor background and the dissipation of his
wife’s prosperous family. Perhaps his most famous work is the
Rosales Saga that includes The Pretenders, Tree, My Brother, My
Executioner, Mass and Po-on. The Rosales Saga “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”.
 Jose was the founder of the Philippine chapter of the
international organization PEN. In 1999, he was awarded the
CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts, the Outstanding
Fulbrighters Award for Literature in 1988; and the Ramon
Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative
Communication Arts in 1980.

 **PEN is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in

1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among
writers everywhere and to emphasize the role of literature in the
development of mutual understanding and world culture; to fight for 
freedom of expression; and to act as a powerful voice on behalf of
writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views. It
is the world's oldest human rights organization[3] and the oldest
international literary organization.
 VIRGILIO S. ALMARIO
1944-
 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. His transalations of
Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo were considered by the
Manila Critics Circle as the best version.
 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.
 ALEJANDRO R. ROCES

 National Artist for Literature (2003)

(July 13, 1924 – May 23, 2011)
 “You cannot be a great writer; first, you have to be a
good person”
 Alejandro Roces, is a short story writer and essayist,
and considered as the country’s best writer of comic
short stories. He is known for his widely anthologized
“My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken.” It is a short story that
reveals how much people perceive things around them.
This particular story won an award in the University of
Arizona and was listed in Martha Foley’s Best American
Short Stories.
 Roces also wrote several newspaper columns. He has always
focused on the derelict aspects of the country’s cultural
heritage. His works have been published in a variety of
international publications. Roces is also a multi-awarded
writer, receiving honors and recognitions including the Rizal
Pro Patria Award and the Gawad CCP para sa Sining.
 BIENVENIDO LUMBERA

National Artist- Literature (2006)

 Bienvenido Lumbera is an award-winning poet, librettist, and
scholar. He has published numerous literary and creative works
including Likhang Dila, Likhang Diwa (1993); Balabay: Mga
Tulang Lunot at Manibalang (2002); Sa Sariling Bayan: Apat na
Dulang May Musika (2004); and “Agundas sa Hacienda Luisita”,
Pakikiramay (2004). His scholarly work in the field of literary
history and criticism are foundational texts in Philippine colleges
and universities: Tagalog Poetry, 1570-1898: Tradition and
Influences in its Development; Philippine Literature: a History and
Anthology; Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature; and
Writing the Nation/Pag-akda ng Bansa.
 LAZARO FRANCISCO
 National Artist for Literature (2009)
(February 22, 1898 – June 17, 1980)
 Lazaro Francisco is considered to be an icon in Tagalog writing
through his nationalist and social criticisms. In 1958, he founded
the Kapatiran ng mga Alagad ng Wikang Pilipino (KAWIKA).
His works include the novels Binhi at Bunga, Cesar, Ama,
Bayang Nagpatiwakal, Sa Paanan ng Krus, Ang Pamana ng
Pulubi, and Bago Lumubog ang Araw. He also wrote short
stories including “Deo”, “Ang Beterano”, “Ang Idolo”, and
“Kapulungan ng mga Pinagpala”. In 1979, the Ateneo de
Manila University awarded Francisco the Tanglaw ng Lahi
Award for his works.
 CIRILO F. BAUTISTA
1941-
 National Artist for Literature (2014)
 Cirilo Bautista is a highly praised poet, fictionist, and essayist.
He is also a Palanca Hall of Famer, winning countless awards
and honors, including the National Book Awards, Gawad Jose
Corazon de Jesus, and Gawad CCP para sa Sining. In 1998,
Bautista was named winner of the Philippine Centennial Prize
for Epic Poetry. His works include The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus
(2001); Believe and Betray: New and Collected Poems (2006);
Galaw ng Asoge (2004); The House of True Desire: Essays about
Life and Literature, (2011); and Things Happen: Poems
2012(2014). Bautista is also an academician and a scholar, and
has taught for more than 30 years.
 ESSENTIAL LEARNING

 Philippine literature is a rich storehouse of narratives and texts

that date back from the precolonial times to the contemporary.
It will continue to evolve as writers continue to write about the
realities and conditions of the country. Exceptional literary
artists such as those mentioned above have all immensely
enriched Philippine literature through their timeless narratives
of the Filipino spirit.