Alfred Yuson

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Alfred A. Yuson (born 1947) (also known as Krip Yuson) has authored 19 books, including novels, poetry collections, short fiction, essays, and children's stories, apart from having edited various other titles.

His works, published without a professional editor, has won several literary distinctions, the most recent of which include the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan (Stalwart of Art and Culture) award from the City of Manila in June 2003, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant for residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy in 2003.

Yuson's mastery of language has been described as ‘heraldic' and having the ‘power to transform'. He has also been compared to Wallace Stevens and Randal Jarrell.

Yuson was conferred with the S.E.A. Write Award in 1992 for lifetime achievement, and has been elevated to the Hall of Fame of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Philippines ' most prestigious literary distinction.

He is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council , Creative Writing Foundation, Inc. and Manila Critics Circle, and is currently Chairman of the Writers Union of the Philippines . He also serves as Philippines Editor for MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing , published by the University of Hawaii . A documentary filmmaker and scriptwriter, he is a board member of the Movie and Television Ratings and Classification Board in the Philippines.

His bibliography includes the poetry collections: Sea Serpent, (Monsoon Press, 1980), Trading in Mermaids (Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1993), Mothers Like Elephants ( Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2000), Hairtrigger Loves: 50 Poems on Woman (University of the Philippines Press, 2002), and the translation, Love's A Vice / Bisyo and Pag-Ibig: Translations into English of 60 Poems by Mike L. Bigornia (National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2004). More impressive is the special sensitivity to genteel language that almost qualifies as avante garde found in all his works.

Early in his career, Yuson received a writing fellowship to attend the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental (1968). Yuson also has a FAMAS award and a Catholic Mass Media Award (CMMA) for Best Screenplay. He has been a documentary filmmaker and scriptwriter, as well as a book, magazine and newspaper editor and designer. Yuson was also a Fellow at the International Writing Program in Iowa City, U.S.A. in 1978; the International Poetry Conference at the University of Hawaii in 1979; the Cambridge Seminar, University of Cambridge, in 1989; the International Writers Retreat at Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland, in 1990; The Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2001 and 2006; and the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2006. He has also participated in many other literary conferences, seminars and festivals in Japan, China, Finland, Scotland, Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore.

Yuson currently writes a literature and culture column for The Philippine Star. He also teaches fiction and poetry at Ateneo de Manila University, where he holds the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair in Creative Writing. His two novels, "The Great Philippine Jungle Cafe" and "Voyeurs and Savages" are studies of Philippine culture.

His postmodernist stance is often described as a "cockneyfied Gabriel Garcia Marquez," one of his achievements, oddly, being his fanatic abhorrence for ordinary language.

[edit] Personal life

Yuson is married to his wife Miriam Macaraig and currently has three children who are also inspired by his works especially his youngest offspring, Mirava Yuson, who is one of the gifted children known for writing.