Close all open things, Lord.

Open all closed things.

All those who have long received, let them give.

All those who have long given, let them receive.

All those too long apart, let them come together.

All those too long together, sunder them.

Let the wise be fools for once, Lord,

 Prayer

Francisco "Franz" Arcellana

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.

Awards
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.

Arcellana belonged to the generation of writers that reshaped the Philippine short story in
English. He was the last of the Veronicans, a radical group of pre-war writers that
experimented with literary forms. He spent years in journalism before shifting to teaching
in the 1950s.

National Artist for Literature

Franz, declared National Artist for Literature in 1990, He was declared National Artist by
then President Corazon Aquino.

Part of the citation for the award read: "In Arcellana’s view, the pride of fiction is ‘that it
is able to render truth, that it is able to represent reality.’ And his reality is the universe of
man, no matter how mundane or sublime. He believes that truth couched in fiction allays
man’s fears and makes reality bearable."

In a recent documentary produced by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts,
Arcellana told director Alfred Yuson: "Not many things that have been said about me are
true, but one of those that are is that I disappeared into the classroom."

He was conferred a doctorate in humane letters honoris causa by the University of the
Philippines in 1989.

Among his students during his decades of teaching at the UP were Yuson, Butch Dalisay,
Erwin Castillo, Charlson Ong, Marra PL. Lanot and Mailin Paterno-Locsin.
Arcellana was the first director of the UP Creative Writing Center, and in the 60s and 70s
was a regular panelist in the National Summer Writers’ Workshop in Dumaguete City run
by the Tiempos.

Death
He died in August 1, 2002 in Quezon City from complications arising from renal failure
and pneumonia at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute of pneumonia and kidney
failure.

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).
 There is no such thing as children’s literature.

- N. V. M. Gonzalez

He was born on 8 September 1915 in Romblon, Philippines. González, however, was raised
in Mansalay, a southern town of the Philippine province of Oriental Mindoro. González
was a son of a school supervisor and a teacher. As a teenager, he helped his father by
delivering meat door-to-door across provincial villages and municipalities. González was
also a musician. He played the violin and even made four guitars by hand. He earned his
first peso by playing the violin during a Chinese funeral in Romblon.

González attended Mindoro High School (now Jose J. Leido Jr. Memorial National High
School) from 1927 to 1930. González attended college at National University (Manila) but
he was unable to finish his undergraduate degree. While in Manila, González wrote for the
Philippine Graphic and later edited for the Evening News Magazine and Manila Chronicle.
His first published essay appeared in the Philippine Graphic and his first poem in Poetry in
1934. González made his mark in the Philippine writing community as a member of the
Board of Advisers of Likhaan: the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center,
founding editor of The Diliman Review and as the first president of the Philippine Writers'
Association. González attended creative writing classes under Wallace Stegner and
Katherine Anne Porter at Stanford University. In 1950, González returned to the
Philippines and taught at the University of Santo Tomas, the Philippine Women's
University and the University of the Philippines (U.P.). At U.P., González was only one of
two faculty members accepted to teach in the university without holding a degree. On the
basis of his literary publications and distinctions, González later taught at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, California State University, Hayward, the University of
Washington, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California,
Berkeley.

On 14 April 1987, the University of the Philippines conferred to González the degree of
Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, "For his creative genius in shaping the
Philippine short story and novel, and making a new clearing within the English idiom and
tradition on which he established an authentic vocabulary, ...For his insightful criticism
by which he advanced the literary tradition of the Filipino and enriched the vocation for
all writers of the present generation...For his visions and auguries by which he gave the
Filipino sense and sensibility a profound and unmistakable script read and reread
throughout the international community of letters..."

"Literature is an affair of letters," N.V.M. Gonzalez once said. A teacher, author,

journalist and essayist, Gonzalez is one of the most widely recognized, anthologized and
closely studied among Filipino writers. His most notable works include the novels The
Winds of April, The Bamboo Dancers and A Season of Grace, short story
collections Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and The Bread of Salt and Other
Stories and essay collections Work on the Mountain and The Novel of Justice: Selected
Essays. Gonzalez distinctively wrote of the Filipino life, of the Filipino in the world.
Gonzalez is himself a Filipino in the world, traversing between the United States and the
Philippines and exploring Europe and Asia. The affair of letters Gonzalez created is more
than literature. It is the story of a Filipino in the world. It is his story.

A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, awarded to Gonzalez in 1948, allowed the aspiring

author to travel to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and Columbia University in
New York City. While at Stanford, Gonzalez attended lectures and classes from many
prominent writers, Wallace Stegner and Katherine Anne Porter amongst them.

After Gonzalez returned to the Philippines in 1950, he began a long teaching career,
beginning with a position at the University of Santo Tomas. Gonzalez also taught at the
Philippine Women's University, but it was the lengthy position at the University of the
Philippines that gave distinction to Gonzalez's career - as a teacher at the university for 18
years, Gonzalez was only one of two people to teach there without holding a degree.
Gonzalez hosted the first University of the Philippines writer's workshop with a group who
would soon form the Ravens. In addition, Gonzalez made his mark in the writing
community as a member of the Board of Advisers of Likhaan: the University of the
Philippines Creative Writing Center, founder The Diliman Review and as the first president
of the Philippine Writers' Association.

Gonzalez continued to teach when he returned to California in the 1960s, serving as a

visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara; professor emeritus at
California State University, Hayward; and professor at University of California at Los
Angeles' Asian American Studies Center and English department.

In 1990 and 1996, "N.V.M. Gonzalez Days" were celebrated in San Francisco and Los
Angeles, respectively. Despite Gonzalez's travels, he never gave up his Filipino citizenship.
Critics feared that Gonzalez would someday settle into the Filipino-American genre of
literature, but Gonzalez often pointed out with an all-familiar twinkle in his eye, "I never
left home." True to his word, the home that shaped Gonzalez's days is present in his
writings, from the blossoming of a love story to the culture reflected in an immigrant
experience.

Awards
Throughout Gonzalez's teaching career, the author produced 14 books and accumulated
many awards along the way. Through these writings, Gonzalez received many prestigious
awards, including repeated Palanca Memorial Award for Literature awards, the Jose Rizal
Pro Patria Award, and the City of Manila Medal of Honor. In addition, his books became
internationally recognized, and his works have been translated into Chinese, German,
Russian and Bahasa Indonesian.

N.V.M. started his career at the age of 19; 65 years later, he was still creating affairs with
letters. He passed away on November 28, 1999, due to kidney complicationsat the age of
84. N.V.M. Gonzalez is remembered as an innovative writer, a dedicated and humble
worker.

N.V.M. González was proclaimed National Artist of the Philippines in 1997 by President
Fidel V. Ramos.
Novels

• The Winds of April (1941)

• A Season of Grace (1956)
• The Bamboo Dancers (1988)
• The Land And The Rain
• The Happiest Boy in The World
• Bread of Salt
• A Warm Hand
 Short Stories

• "The Tomato Game".1992

• A Grammar of Dreams and Other Stories. University of the Philippines
Press, 1997
• The Bread of Salt and Other Stories. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1993; University of the Philippines Press, 1993
• Mindoro and Beyond: Twenty-one Stories. Quezon City: University of
the Philippines Press, 1981; New Day, 1989
• Selected Stories. Denver, Colorado: Alan Swallow, 1964
• Look, Stranger, on this Island Now. Manila: Benipayo, 1963
• Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories. Manila: Benipayo,
1954; Bookmark Filipino Literary Classic, 1992
• Seven Hills Away. Denver, Colorado: Alan Swallow, 1947

Essays

• A Novel of Justice: Selected Essays 1968–1994. Manila: National

Commission for Culture and the Arts and Anvil (popular edition), 1996
• Work on the Mountain (Includes The Father and the Maid, Essays on
Filipino Life and Letters and Kalutang: A Filipino in the World),
University of the Philippines Press, 1996

Awards and prizes

 Given a Trophy from A Jokarts company (1997-1998)

 Regents Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, 1998–1999
 Philippines Centennial Award for Literature, 1998
 National Artist Award for Literature, 1997
 Oriental Mindoro Sangguniang Panlalawigan Resolution "extending due
recognition to Nestor V. M. González... the commendation he well deserves..." 1996
 City of Manila Diwa ng Lahi award "for his service and contribution to Philippine
national Literature," 1996
 City of Los Angeles resolution declaring October 11, 1996 "N.V.M. González Day,
1996
 The Asian Catholic Publishers Award, 1993
 The Filipino Community of California Proclamation "honoring N.V.M. González
for seventy-eight years of achievements," 1993
 Ninoy Aquino Movement for Social and Economic Reconstruction through
Volunteer Service award, 1991
 City and County of San Francisco proclamation of March 7, 1990 "Professor
N.V.M. González Day in San Francisco," 1990
 Cultural Center of the Philippines award, Gawad Para sa Sining, 1990
 Writers Union of the Philippines award, Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtás,
1989
 University of the Philippines International Writer-in-Residence, 1988
 Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris Causa) from the University of the Philippines,
1987
 Djerassi Foundation Artist-in-Residence, 1986
 Philippine Foreign Service Certificate of Appreciation for Work in the International
Academic and Literary Community, at San Francisco, 1983
 Emeritus Professor of English, California State University, 1982
 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award (Short Story), First Prize for 'The Tomato Game,'
1971
 City of Manila Medal of Honor, 1971.
 Awarded Leverhulme Fellowship, University of Hong Kong, 1969.
 Visiting Associate Professorship in English, University of California, Santa
Barbara, 1968.
 British Council award for Travel to England, 1965.
 Intemaciones Award for Travel in the Federal German Republic, 1965.
 Philippines Free Press First Prize Award winner for Serenade (short story), 1964.
 Rockefeller Foundation Writing Grant and Travel in Europe, 1964
 Jose Rizal Pro-Patria Award for The Bamboo Dancers, 1961
 Republic Cultural Heritage Award for The Bamboo Dancers, 1960
 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award (Short Story), Third Prize winner for On the Ferry,
1959
 Philippine Free Press Third Prize winner for On the Ferry, 1959
 Republic Award of Merit for "the advancement of Filipino culture in the field of
English Literature," 1954.
 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award (Short Story), Second Prize winner for Lupo and
the River, 1953
 Rockefeller Foundation Study and Travel fellowship to India and the Far East, 1952
 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award (Short Story), Second Prize winner for Children
of the Ash-covered Loam, 1952
 Rockefeller Foundation Writing Fellowship to Stanford University, Kenyon
College School of English, and Columbia University, 1949–1950
 Liwayway Short Story Contest, Third Prize winner for Lunsod, Nayon at Dagat-
dagatan, 1943
 First Commonwealth Literary Contest honorable mention for The Winds of April,
1940