Conchitina Cruz

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Conchitina R. Cruz is a Filipina poet who teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

Formerly an INTARMED student, Cruz shifted to the University of the Philippines' Creative Writing program, from which she graduated magna cum laude and College of Arts and Letters valedictorian in 1998.

While on a Fulbright grant, she studied and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she received her MFA in Writing.

Her works include Disappear, a chapbook published in 2005 by High Chair, and Dark Hours, published in 2005 by The University of the Philippines Press. She is also the youngest poet in the anthology A Habit of Shores, the third part in Gémino H. Abad's three-volume collection of one hundred years of Philippine poetry and verse.

Some of her works have also appeared in Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, Philippine Studies and the online journal High Chair. In September 2006, Dark Hours was reviewed by Andy Brown, the creative writing program director at the University of Exeter.

Cruz has won two Palanca Awards to date, one in 1996 for "Second Skin" and another in 2001 for "The Shortest Distance". Her book Dark Hours won the 2006 National Book Award for Poetry.

She is married to Robert JA Basilio, Jr. who now works as the shipping editor of Business Mirror.