NVM Gonzales
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA – Friends, colleagues and former students of Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, better known as NVM Gonzalez will remember him at a Centennial Celebration on Saturday, May 21, 2016. The event will be held at the Echo Park Branch Library located at 1410 W Temple Street, Los Angeles from 2-5 p.m.
NVM was born in Romblon, Philippines on September 8, 1915 and he grew up in Mindoro. He passed away on November 28, 1999 at the age of 84 in Manila. He was a novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. He wrote five novels, eight short fiction and two essays. His books have been published in English and Filipino, as well as in Chinese, German, Russian and Indonesian. In 1997, he was declared as one of the Philippines’ National Artists for Literature.
He was on the Board of Advisers of Likhaan, the University of the Philippines (UP) Creative Writing Center, Founding Editor of The Diliman Review and first president of the Philippine Writers’ Association. He attended creative writing classes under Wallace Stegner and Katherine Anne Porter at Stanford University. While in the Philippines, he taught at UST, PWU and UP. He also taught in the US at UC-Santa Barbara, CSU-Hayward, the University of Washington, UCLA and UC-Berkeley. Many well-known Filipino and Filipino American writers today have been mentored by NVM.
The following will share their memories of NVM: Dr Paulino Lim, Jr., Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Dr Barbara Gaerlan, Mr. Allan G. Aquino and Cecilia Ochoa. Dr Paulino Lim, Jr. is a Professor Emeritus of English at California State, Long Beach. He is the author of a quartet of political novels set during the Marcos dictatorship, and three short story collections. His latest Sabong, Etc. includes the Twitter story “Deus ex Vulcanus.” On March 3, 2016, the University of Santo Tomas in Manila conferred on him a Lifetime Literary Award for his contributions to Philippine Literature. Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the author and editor of 19 books. She has been the recipient of a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District. She also received the prestigious Filipinas Magazine Arts Award, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu. Visit her sites:http://www.ceciliabrainard.com and http://cbrainard.blogspot.com Barbara Gaerlan is the Assistant Director of the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She first met NVM Gonzalez as a new graduate student at UCLA in 1991 when she took his Philippine Literature course in Asian American Studies.
In 1995 she was lucky to be in the Philippines on a Fulbright fellowship working on her dissertation research when NVM invited a large group of Filipino and American academic and literary types to accompany him on a trip to Mindoro and Romblon. She is grateful to him for his enthusiasm for life, culture, and for Philippine Literature.
In the fall of 1998, Allan G. Aquino was NVM Gonzalez’s very last student in the United States. As a poet and Asian American Studies scholar, Allan credits NVM with profoundly influencing his ways of seeing and writing about the world. As per NVM’s ideals, Allan continues to contemplate the “rhizomatous” nature of Filipino genius by way of pedagogy, community organizing, and the arts.
Visit Allan’s site at: https://allanaquino.wordpress.com/ Cecile Ochoa is a Filipino American journalist and creative writer who started her career in the Philippines as a full time reporter for the Philippines News Agency in the 70s, a camera reporter for Channel 4 News of National Media Production Center and contributing writer for various publications. She is a graduate of Journalism from the UP College of Mass Communications and holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. Pursuing her creative writing career, she participated in various writing workshops at UP, including its notable UP Writing Workshop, the Galian sa Arte at Tula (GAT) where she interacted with National Artist Nick Joaquin, Palanca awardees Bienvenido Lumbera, Pete Lacaba, Butch Dalisay, among others.