Jose Dalisay Jr.


Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. is a Filipino writer. He has won numerous awards and prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction and screenwriting, including 16 Palanca Awards.

Early life and education

Dalisay was born in Romblon in 1954. He completed his primary education at La Salle Green Hills, Philippines in 1966 and his secondary education at the Philippine Science High School in 1970. He dropped out of college to work as a newspaper reporter. He also wrote scripts mostly for Lino Brocka, the National Artist of the Philippines for Theater and Film. Dalisay returned to school and earned his B.A. English degree, cum laude from the University of the Philippines in 1984. He later received an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in 1988 and a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1991 as a Fulbright scholar.

Literary career

Dalisay has authored more than 30 books since 1984. Six of those books have garnered National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle. In 1998, Dalisay made it to the Cultural Center of the Philippines Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most accomplished Filipino artists of the past century. Among his numerous books are Oldtimer and Other Stories ; Sarcophagus and Other Stories ; Killing Time in a Warm Place ; Madilim ang Gabi sa Laot at Iba Pang mga Dula ng Ligaw na Pag-Ibig ; Penmanship and Other Stories ; The Island ; Pagsabog ng Liwanag/Aninag, Anino ; Mac Malicsi, TNT/Ang Butihing Babae ng Timog ; The Lavas: A Filipino Family ; The Best of Barfly ; The Filipino Flag ; Man Overboard ; Journeys with Light: The Vision of Jaime Zobel ; Selected Stories ; and "The Knowing Is in the Writing: Notes on the Practice of Fiction".

Editor

Dalisay has also worked extensively as a professional editor. He served as Executive Editor of the ten-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. His clients have included the Asian Development Bank, the Ayala Foundation, SGV & Co., the National Economic and Development Authority, the Office of the President, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Philippine Airlines, and the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation, among others.

Achievements

Dalisay has won 16 Palanca Awards in five genres. For winning at least five First Prize awards, he was elevated to the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000. He has also garnered five Cultural Center of the Philippines awards for playwriting; and FAMAS, URIAN, Star and Catholic Mass Media awards and citations for his screenplays. He also chaired the 1992 ASEAN Writers Conference/Workshop, in Penang, Malaysia. He was named one of The Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1993 for his creative writing. In 2005, he received the Premio Cervara di Roma in Italy for extensively promoting Philippine literature overseas. In 2007, his second novel, Soledad's Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong.
He has received Hawthornden Castle, British Council, David T.K. Wong, Rockefeller, and Civitella Ranieri fellowships, and has held the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair at the Ateneo de Manila University; and the Jose Joya, Jorge Bocobo, and Elpidio Quirino professorial chairs at U.P. Diliman. He has lectured on Philippine culture and politics at the University of Michigan, University of Auckland, Australian National University, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, St. Norbert College, University of East Anglia, University of Rome, London School of Economics, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was named Pacific Leadership Fellow in 2015..
After serving for three years as English and Comparative Literature Department Chair, Dalisay assumed the post of Vice President for Public Affairs of the U.P. System from May 2003 to February 2005; he returned to the post in February 2017 and retired in January 2019. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of English and creative writing at the College of Arts and Letters, U.P. Diliman, where he also coordinated the creative writing program. He was Director of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing from 2008 to 2017. Aside from his weekly Arts & Culture column for the Philippine Star, he wrote political and social commentary for the newsmagazine Newsbreak and the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine.
In 2017, the One UP-Jose Yap Dalisay Jr. Professorial Chair in Creative Writing was endowed in his honor by an anonymous donor at the University of the Philippines.

Notable works

Novels

More than twenty produced screenplays, including