Filipino Authors: Hagedorn and Jose

Famous Filipino Authors

• Jessica Hagedorn is best known for her 1990 novel, Dogeaters.
• Hagedorn was raised in the Philippines and later moved to San Francisco as a teen.
• Hagedorn's ethnic heritage includes Spanish, Filipino, French, Irish, and Chinese roots.
• Dogeaters won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
• Dogeaters highlights the layers of Filipino society and the influence of America's entertainment industry.
• Hagedorn is a poet and playwright and currently lives in New York with her daughters.
• Joseph Papp produced Hagedorn’s first play, Mango Tango, in 1978.
• F. Sionil Jose is known for writing about social justice.
• Jose's novels have been translated into 22 languages.
• Rosales Saga is a five-volume work that follows the Samson family over 100 years.
• Jose's books focuses on provincial life in the Philippines, the revolution against Spain, and the Filipino family structure.
• His anti-elitist views have made him somewhat unpopular within the Philippines.
• Sionil Jose's works are highly acclaimed internationally.
• He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature in 1980.
• Nick Joaquin won the National Artist award for Literature.
• Joaquin was published at 17 and studied in Hong Kong after winning an essay contest scholarship.
• He worked as a journalist and elevated the standards of journalism in the Philippines through his intellectual writing.
• Essential reading includes Joaquin’s book, The Woman with Two Navels.
• Many of his short stories, such as "May Day Eve,” are accessible and enjoyable for readers new to the Philippines.
• Merlinda Bobis started as a painter but became a writer because "painting with words was cheaper.”
• Bobis's books, short stories, and poems portray lesser-known facets of Filipino life with a feminist viewpoint.
• Fish-Hair Woman is about a romance between a village woman and an Australian soldier amid conflict.
• Bobis won the Prix Italia award for her play Rita’s Lullaby.
• She also won the Steele Rudd Award for her short story “White Turtle.”
• Jose Dalisay Jr. is commonly known by his pen name, Butch Dalisay.
• Dalisay was imprisoned during Martial Law, inspiring his novel, Killing Time in a Warm Place.
• Soledad’s Sister tackles the struggles of overseas Filipino workers and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.
• Dalisay has won 16 Palanca Awards, the Philippines’ highest literary prize.
• Luis Francia has lived in New York for decades and his work is shaped by his experiences growing up in the Philippines.
• Francia is a poet, author, and teacher who wrote for the Village Voice newspaper for over 20 years.
• His memoir, Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, won a PEN Open Book Award and an Asian American Literary Award.
• Lualhati Torres Bautista was born on December 2, 1945.
• Bautista is a Filipina writer, novelist, activist, and political critic.
• Her popular novels include Dekada '70, Bata, Bata, Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, and ‘GAPÔ.
• Bata, Bata was adapted into a feature film in 1998 and won Best Picture award.
• Ricardo Lee was born on March 19, 1948.
• Lee is a Filipino screenwriter, journalist, novelist, and playwright.
• He has written more than 180 film screenplays since 1973.
• Earning him more than 70 trophies from various award-giving bodies, including three life achievement awards from the Cinemanila International Film Festival, the Gawad Urian, and the PMPC respectively.
• Lope K. Santos was born Lope Santos y Canseco, September 25, 1879 – May 1, 1963.
• Santos was a Filipino Tagalog-language writer and former senator of the Philippines.
• He is best known for his 1906 socialist novel, Banaag at Sikat.
• Noted for contributions for the development of Filipino grammar and Tagalog orthography.
• Jose Rizal is the Philippines’ national hero and was also a writer, poet, and essayist.
• Rizal’s novels, Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, critiqued the injustices of Spanish colonization.
• Rizal's novels revealed the injustices of Spanish colonization while praising the Filipino in his most natural state.
• The novels were banned in the Philippines and sparked anti-Spanish sentiment.
• Rizal's execution at 35 led to the Philippine Revolution and independence.
• His books and poem, “Mi Ultimo Adios,” have influenced Filipino writers.

Famous International Authors

• William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor (baptized April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616).
• He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.
• Often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon”.
• His works include approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and other verses.
• Shakespeare's early plays were primarily comedies and histories.
• He then focused on tragedies like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
• Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961).
• Hemingway's economical style, known as the "iceberg theory,” significantly influenced 20th-century fiction.
• Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
• Some of his works include In Our Time (1925), The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bells Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and The Sea (1952).
• Joanne Rowling was born July 31, 1965, known by her pen name J. K. Rowling
• Rowling is a British author and philanthropist.
• She is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series.
• Harry Potter has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies.
• Rowling also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
• Charles John Huffam Dickens was born February 7, 1812 – June 9, 1870
• Dickens was an English writer and social critic.
• He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters.
• Widely regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era
• His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular
• Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775 – July 18, 1817
• Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels
• Her novels interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
• With the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer.
• Adeline Virginia Woolf was born January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941.
• Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th century authors
• During the interwar period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society.
• Best-known works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928).
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910
• Samuel was known by his pen name Mark Twain.
• Twain was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.
• He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced
• Some of his novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
• Thomas Stearns Eliot was born September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965
• Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.
• Considered one of the 20th century's major poets.
• He first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915.
• Mary Ann Evans was born November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880.
• Evans was known by her pen name George Eliot.
• She was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
• Notable works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876).
• Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849
• Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic.
• Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.
• He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole.
• Poe made a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.