FICTION- refers to any imaginative fact and idea of life.

The characters and the settings are purely works of

the author’s mind and may or may not happen in real life.

TYPES OF FICTION
1. CHIC LIT – addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and light-heartedly. It
sometimes includes romantic elements but is not generally considered a direct subcategory of the
romance novel, because the heroine’s relationship with her family and friends is often just as important
as her romantic relationships.
2. FLASH FICTION – a style of fictional literature of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted
definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low
as three hundred words, while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction.
3. SPECULATIVE FICTION – an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres,
specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian
and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction and alternate history in literature as well
as related static, motion and visual arts.
4. TEXT TULA is mobile phone poetry; short traditional formal verses are used in this form of genre. It is
composed of 7777 syllable count with rhyme scheme aabb, abab, abba.
5. HYPERPOETRY refers to works of verse which could be presented without the computer. Hyperpoety
includes verse with links to sub-poem or footnotes, poetry “generators” poetry with movement or
images.
6. BLOG is a discussion or informational website published on the world wide web consisting of discrete
often informal diary-style text entries or posts.

CANONICAL AUTHORS IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

Philippine National Artists

What is a National Artist?

A national artist is a Filipino citizen who has been given the rank and title of National Artist in recognition of
his or her significant contribution to the development of Philippine Arts and Letters.

1. Amado Vera Hernandez (1973)

“Makata ng mga Manggagawa,” he was a poet, a playwright, and a novelist, and practiced
“committed art.” His novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit, written when he was in prison, is the first Filipino
socio-political novel that exposed the ills of the society as evident in the agrarian problems of the 50s.
His works include:
 Bayan Malaya
 Isang Dipang Langit
 Luha ng Buwaya
 Amado V. Hernandez: Tudla at Tudling: Katipunan ng mga Nalathalang Tula 1921-1970
 Langaw sa Isang Basong Gatas at Iba Pang Kwento ni Amado V. Hernandez
 Magkabilang Mukha ng Isang Bagol at Iba Pang Akda ni Amado V. Hernandez
2. Jose Garcia Villa (1973)
“Art is a miraculous flirtation of nothing!
Aiming for nothing, and landing on the Sun.” – Doveglion: Collected Poem
He introduced the reversed consonance rhyme scheme, including the comma poems that made full use
of the punctuation mark in an innovative, poetic way. He used Doveglion (Dove, Eagle, Lion) as
penname, the very characters he attributed to himself.
3. Nick Joaquin (1976)
He was regarded by many as the most distinguished Filipino writer in English writing so variedly and so
well about so many aspects of the Filipino. He enriched the English language with critics coining
 Joaquinesque to describe his baroque Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of the English based
on Filipinisms. As journalist, Joaquin used the name Quijano de Manila but whether he is writing
literature or journalism, fellow national artist Francisco Arcellana opines that “it is always of the
highest skill and quality.”
His works include:
 The Woman Who Had Two Navels
 A Portrait of the Artist As A Filipino
 Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young
 The Ballad of the Five Battles
 Rizal in Saga
 Almanac of Manileños
 Cave and Shadows
4. Carlos P. Romulo (1982)
 He has multifaceted careers that spanned 50 years of public service as educator, soldier,
university president, journalist and diplomat. It is a 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.
 the only Asian to win America’s coveted Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for a series of articles
predicting the outbreak of World War II.
His works include:
 The United (A Novel)
 I Walked With Heroes (Autobiography)
 I Saw the Fall of the Philippines
 Mother America
 I See the Philippine Rise (war-time memoirs)
 Forty Years: A Third World Soldier at the UN
 The Philippine Presidents
5. Francisco Arcellana (1990)
 He was a writer, a poet, a critic, a journalist and teacher, and one of 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.
His works include:
 Selected Stories (1962)
 Poetry and Politics: The State of Original Writing in English in the Philippines Today (1977)
 The Francisco Arcellana Sampler (1990)
 Frankie
 The Man Who Would Be Poe
 Death in A Factory
 Lina
 A Clown Remembers
 Divided by Two
 The Mats
6. N.VM. Gonzales (1977)
 Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzales, fictionist, essayist, poet, and teacher, articulated the Filipino
spirit in rural, urban landscape.
 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.
His works include:
  The Winds of April
 Seven Hills Away
 Children of the Ash-covered Loam and Other Stories
 The Bamboo Dancers
 Look, Stranger, on this Island Now
 Mindoro and Beyond: Twenty-one Stories
 The Bread of Salt and Other Stories
 Work on the Mountain
 The Novel of Justice: Selected Essays 1968-1994
 A Grammar of Dreams and Other Stories
7. Edith Tiempo (1999)
 A poet, fictionist, teacher and literary critic and one of the finest Filipino writers in English
whose works are characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of craftsman
and insights.
 Her poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of the significant experiences as revealed, in
two of her much anthologized pieces, “The Little Marmoset” and “Bonsai”.
Her works include:
 A Blade of Fern (1978)
 The Native Coast (1979)
 The Alien Corn (1992)
 The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems (1966)
 The Charmer’s Box and Other Poems (1993)
 Abide, Joshua, and Other Stories (1964)
8. F. Sionil Jose (2001)
 F. Sionil Jose’s writings since the late 60s, when taken collectively, can best be described as
epic.
 Its sheer volume puts him on the forefront of Philippine writing in English. But ultimately, it
is the consistent espousal of the aspirations of the Filipino- for national sovereignty and
social justice- that guarantees the value of his oeuvre.
His works include:
 The Pretenders
 Tree
 My Brother, My Executioner
 Mass
 Poon
9. Virgilio S. Almario (2003)
 Aldo known as Rio Alma; a poet, a literary historian, and a critic, who has revived and
reinvented traditional Filipino poetic forms, even as he championed modernist poetics.
His works include:
 Makinasyon In these works, his poetic voice soared
 Peregrinasyon from the lyrical to the satirical to the epic, from
 Dokrtinang Anakpawis the dramatic to the incantatory, in his often
 Mga Retrato at Retrato at Rekwerdo severe examination of the self, and the society.
 Muli, Sa Kandungan ng Lupa

10. Alejandro Roces (2003)

 A short story writer and essayist, and essayist, and considered as the country’s best writer of
comic short stories. He is widely known for his anthologized story, “My Brother’s Peculiar
Chicken”
11. Bienvenido Lumbera (2006)
 He introduced to Tagalog literature what is now known as Bagay poetry, a landmark
aesthetic tendency that has helped to change the vernacular poetic tradition.

His works include:

 Likhang Dila, Likhang Diwa
 Balaybay, Mga Tulang Lunot at Manibalang, 2002
 Sa Sariling Bayan
 Apat na Dulang May Musika, 2004Agunyas sa Hacienda Luisita\
 Tagalog Poetry
 Tradition and Influence in Its Development
 Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology,
 Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature
 Writing the Nation/Pag-akda ng Bansa
12. Lazaro Francisco
 He developed the social realist tradition in Philippine fiction. His eleven novels, now
acknowledged classics of Philippine literature, embody the author’s commitment to
nationalism.
 His pen dignifies the Filipino and accents all the positives about the Filipino way of life. His
writings have contributed much to the formation of Filipino nationalism.
His works include:
 Ama,
 Bayang Nagpatiwakal
 Maganda Pa Ang Daigdig
 Daluyong

13. Cirilo F. Baustista (2014)

 A poet, a fictionist and essayist with exceptional achievements and significant contributions
to the development of the country’s literary arts.
 Throughout his career that spans more than four decades, he has established a reputation for
fine and profound artistry; his books, lectures, poetry readings and creative writing
workshops continue to influence his peers and generations of young writers.
His works include:
 Summer Suns
 Words and Battlefields
 The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus
 Galaw ng Asoge