Divided by Two
Author: Francisco Arcellana
Who is Francisco 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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-levelsyllabi in the Philippines.
• Some of his works have been translated into...