Francisco Arcellana

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. In his junior year, mainly because of the publication of his “trilogy of the turtles” in the Literary Apprentice, Arcellana was invited to join the UP Writers Club by Manuel Arguilla – who at that time was already a campus literary figure. In 1934, he edited and published Expression, a quarterly of experimental writing. It caught the attention of Jose Garcia Villa who started a correspondence with Arcellana. It also spawned the Veronicans, a group of 13 pre-WWII who rebelled against traditional forms and themes in Philippine literature.

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. The war stopped his schooling. After the war, he continued working in media and publishing and began a career in the academe. He was manager of the International News Service and the editor of This Week. He joined the UP Department of English and Comparative Literature and served as adviser of the Philippine Collegian and director of the UP Creative...

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