Edgar B. Maranan

EDGARDO B. MARANAN is a Filipino poet, essayist, fictionist, playwright, writer of children’s stories, and translator. He was born in Bauan, Batangas on 7 November 1946 and grew up in Baguio City, Philippines, where he finished his high school education. He writes in Filipino and in English, has published four books of poetry and twenty books of children's stories, and has edited or co-edited books and journals. At the age of 16, he represented the Philippines at the 1963 New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum. At the age of 18, he joined the Kabataang Makabayan (Nationalist Youth) and became a student activist. He taught political science at the University of the Philippines from 1970 to 1972, and joined the underground movement when martial law was declared by Marcos. He became a political detainee for more than two years, continued writing and even won literary awards while he was in prison. After being released, he went back to UP and became assistant professor of Philippine Studies, at the same time serving as policy and research consultant in both houses of Congress (committees on Cultural Communities and Environment). Earlier, in 1972, he had been a writing fellow at the Silliman Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. Then in 1985, he was the Philippine fellow at the Iowa International Writing Program, National Fellow for Poetry of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1988, British Council fellow at the International Summer School of the University of London and Oxford University in 1992, participant at the International Writers Residence at Lavigny, Switzerland in 2006, and panelist at the Ubud International Writers Festival in Bali in 2007. From 1993 to 2006, he served as Foreign Information Officer of the Philippine Embassy in London, editing the newsletter, contributing articles and literary pieces to Filipino publications in the UK, and assisting in the embassy's cultural and community projects. He came back to the Philippines in late 2006 and has been a freelance writer up to the present. Maranan has won the most number of prizes—thirty-three in all—for his works in English and Filipino, in the Philippines’ most prestigious literary competition, the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, and was elevated to its Hall of Fame in 2000, having won five first prizes. He has also garnered prizes in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Annual Literary Contest, Palihang Aurelio Tolentino Playwriting Competition, Institute of National Language poetry competition, Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, Philippine Graphic Nick Joaquin Literary Prize, Filamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY)-Alfrredo Navarro Salanga Writers Prize, which he won three years in a row, 1989 to 1991. His third book of poetry, Passage / poems 1983-2006, won a National Book Award in 2008, while an anthology of essays he and his daughter Len Maranan-Goldstein co-edited, A Taste of Home: Pinoy Expats and Food Memories, was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2009. In 2008, he wrote a musical play, EJ: Ang Pinagdaanang Buhay nina Evelio Javier at Edgar Jopson, for the Tanghalang Pilipino of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In 2009, his storybook for children, Si Sibol at si Gunaw--which had won the PBBY (Philippine Board on Books for Young People)-Alfredo Salanga Writers Prize in 1990--was adapted by Ballet Manila into a full-length ballet performance, Alamat: si Sibol at si Gunaw, which had another successful staging in 2012 to open the 17th season of Lisa Macuja's ballet company. In 2010, he wrote a new stage version of the folk metrical romance tale Ibong Adarna for the Gantimpalang Theater Foundation. His children's books are published by Bookmark, C&E Publishing, and Anvil Publishing, which put out his most recent children's books: The Artist of the Cave and other stories for young readers (2011) and The Google Song and other rhymes for our times (2012). He has been conferred the Francisco Balagtas Award by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino and the Writers Union of the Philippines for his lifelong contributions to Philippine literature as a bilingual writer. Maranan is an active member of the Baguio Writers Group, Umpil (Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas or Philippine Writers Union), and PEN Philippines.