Ricardo M de Ungria

Ricardo M de Ungria has published seven books of poetry and edited a number of anthologies, for which he has won five National Book Awards. Through a Fulbright Grant, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989. He has also received writing grants from the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers and Bellagio Study and Conference Center. He is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council, which published Caracoa, the first and only poetry journal in the Philippines in the eighties. In 1999 he founded the Davao Writers Guild that that publishes a literary journal called Dagmay and features literary works in various languages by mostly young writers in the Davao region. Ricardo has served as Chancellor of the University of the Philippines in Mindanao for two terms (2001-2007) and as Commissioner for the Arts at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (2008-11).