During the Japanese Occupation, Tagalog was favored by the Japanese military authority. Writing in English was consigned to limbo. It picked up after the war, however, with a passion and thrust for excellence that continue to this day. Stevan Javellana’s “Without Seeing the Dawn” (1947), the first postwar novel in English, was published in the United States. In 1946, the Barangay Writers Project was founded to help print books in English.
Against a background marked by political agitation and authority conflicts with Hukbalahap guerrillas, authors in English honed their sense of trade and techniques in the postwar period. Among the authors who came into their own during this time were Nick Joaquin, NVM Gonzalez, Francisco Arcellana, Carlos Bulosan, F. Sionil Jose, Ricaredo Demetillo, Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Carlos Angeles, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Amador Daguio, Estrella Alfon, Alejandrino Hufana, Gregorio Brillantes, Bienvenido Santos, Dominador Ilio, T. D. Agcaoili, Alejandro R. Roces, Sinai C. Hamada, Linda Ty-Casper, Virginia Moreno, Luis Dato, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Abelardo and Tarrosa Subido, Manuel A. Viray, Vicente Rivera Jr., and Oscar de Zuniga, among many others.
Fresh from studies in American universities, normally as Fulbright or Rockefeller scholars, a number of these authors introduced New Criticism to the country and applied its principles in literature classes and writing workshops. In this way, the Silliman Writers Summer Workshop was born (started in 1962 by Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo) and the U.P. Writers Summer Workshop (started in 1965 by the Department of English at U.P.). To this day, these workshops help discover writing talents and develop them in their craft.
