Literature

The late great Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta became one of the Philippines’ major poets “regardless of gender” but her first love was music, and she was trained to be a concert artist.   Why, she could have been another Van Cliburn (“better,” the nationalist music lover...

Philippine history boiled, bubbled, and spewed trouble in the years that marked the birth and growing up years of Paz Marquez-Benitez. The future short story writer, editor, and educator was born to a world of privilege on March 3, 1894 in provincial Tayabas (now...

When Carmen Guerrero Nakpil peacefully breathed her last on July 30, 2018, I knew I was witnessing the end of an era of good and insightful writing. There was a moment of denial when I received the early morning text from her daughter, Gemma,...

Lualhati Bautista is one hell of a woman. Her quite ordinary face, her typical brown skin, and her average height of about five feet one inch do not intimidate. But she looks at you straight in the eye with that no-nonsense expression. She’s...

NOVEMBER 1972, MARTIAL LAW. MY MAGAZINE THE GRAPHIC, PUBLISHED BY DON Antonio Araneta and edited by noted journalist-lawyer Luis R. Mauricio, was closed down, along with other publications, except the crony Daily Express. Staffers more radical than me were on the run, hunted by...

In high school, four decades before I became a senior citizen, I turned to three writers as models of good writing: Kerima Polotan, Gilda Cordero Fernando and Carmen Guerrero Nakpil. Of the three, Nakpil was the eldest (born 1922), followed by Polotan (born 1925)...