Sunday, June 21, 2009

ESTRELLA ALFON


Estrella Alfon is a well-known storywriter, playwright and journalist; and though a Cebuana, she wrote almost exclusively in English. She became a member of the U. P. Writers Club and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. Her first story, Grey Confetti, was published in graphic in 1935. She was the only female member of the Veronicans, an avant garde group of writers in the 1930s led by Francisco Arcellana and H.R. Ocampo, she was also regarded as their muse.

She is also reportedly the most prolific Filipina writer prior to World War II. She was a regular contributor to Manila-based national magazines; she had several stories cited in Jose Garcia Villa’s annual honor rolls. She also served on the Philippine Board of Tourism in the 1970s. A collection of her early short stories, “Dear Esmeralda,” (1940) won Honorable Mention in the Commonwealth Literary Award. Four of her one-act plays won all the prizes in the Arena Theater Play Writing Contest: (1961-1962) “Losers Keepers” (first prize), “Strangers” (second prize), “Rice” (third prize), and “Beggar” (fourth prize). Won top prize in the Palanca Contest for “With Patches of Many Hues.”Second place Palanca Award for her short story, "The White Dress"(1974). National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing Center at 1979.


Palanca Awards:


Forever Witches, One-act Play (Third place, 1960), With Patches of Many Hues, One-act Play (First place, 1962), Tubig, One-act Play (Second place, 1963), The Knitting Straw, One-act Play, (Third place, 1968), The White Dress, Short Story (Second place, 1974)


(: Panitikan.com.ph: Your Portal to Philippine Literature. 2005. Web. 22 June 2009. <http://panitikan.com.ph/authors/a/estrellaalfon.html>.)

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