Luis H. Francia | |
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Born | Luis H. Francia Manila, Philippines |
Occupation | Poet, playwright, journalist, and nonfiction writer |
Nationality | Filipino American |
Genre | Poetry, Play, Journalism, Memoir, History |
Notable works | Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (2001), RE: Recollections, Reviews, Reflections (2015) |
Spouse | Midori Yamamura, Ph.D. |
Luis H. Francia is a Filipino American poet, playwright, journalist, and nonfiction writer. His memoir, Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, won both the 2002 PEN Open Book[1] and the 2002 Asian American Literary Awards.
Francia was born in Manila, Philippines. He graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University with an AB in Humanities, cum laude[2] and moved to New York in the 1970s. As a budding poet in New York, he studied with José García Villa,[3] the National Artist of the Philippines for literature, at The New School and later at his private workshop in Greenwich Village. Francia wrote the introduction to the 2008 Penguin Classics edition of Villa’s poetry, Doveglion: Collected Poems.
He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, City University of Hong Kong, Ateneo De Manila University, and Hunter College. Currently, he writes an online column "The Artist Abroad" for the Philippine Daily Inquirer[4] and teaches at New York University.[5]
He lives in Queens with his wife, Dr. Midori Yamamura, an assistant professor of art history at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY) and a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art.
His poetry books include The Arctic Archipelago and other poems, The Beauty of Ghosts, Museum of Absences, and Tattered Boat. In 1978, he won first prize in the poetry competition of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for "15 Poems".[6] He has two essay collections, Memories of Overdevelopment: Reviews and Essays of Two Decades and RE: Recollections, Reviews, Reflections, which won the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award for Best Collection of Essays in English in 2016.[7] He also completed A History of the Philippines: from Indios Bravos to Filipinos in 2010.
Two of Francia’s plays have been staged: The Beauty of Ghosts at Topaz Arts in New York in 2007 and 2014[8] and The Strange Case of Citizen de la Cruz at Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco in 2012.[9]
He is the editor of Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English; co-editor with Eric Gamalinda of Flippin’: Filipinos on America, and with Angel Velasco Shaw of Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. He is included in numerous anthologies, including The Library of America’s Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing.
Francia has written for a number of publications, including The Village Voice (where he was an assistant editor from 1984 to 2006), The Nation, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times. He was an op-ed columnist for the Daily News (1993–1995), a New York correspondent for Hong Kong’s Asiaweek, and a stringer for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He also has provided commentary for National Public Radio (NPR), KQED in San Francisco, and WBAI in New York.