Ricardo de Ungria

De Ungria was born in 1951 and raised in Paco, Manila.^[2][4] He did spoken word poetry and performed in a rock band in the 1970s.^[1] He graduated with a Bachelor's degree cum laude in Literature from the De La Salle University. In 1990, while on a Fulbright Scholarship in the United States, he was awarded an MFA in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis.^[5][6][7] He received writing residency fellowships at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in 1991 and the Bellagio Study of Conference Center in 1993.^[5][8][9]

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In 1999, he moved to Davao City to become the first dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of the newly established University of the Philippines Mindanao campus.^[10][5] In the same year, he founded the Davao Writers Guild, which publishes the works of its members; holds poetry readings;^[5][11] and hosts the Davao Writing Workshops, which started in 2005.^{[citation needed]} The Guild has been publishing Cebuano, Filipino, Davaoeño, Karay-a, and English works in the literary journal Dagmay since 2001.^[5][11] In 2006, they began publishing a monthly literary supplement in SunStar Davao.^[11] While serving as Chancellor of UP Mindanao (2001-2007),^[12][5] he also organized the Davao Colleges and Universities Network (DACUN) in 2001 and the Mindanao Studies Consortium Foundation, Inc. (MSCFI) in 2003, both being a consortium of universities in the Davao and Mindanao regions, respectively.^{[citation needed]} In 2004, he also organized the Mindanao Science and Technology Park Consortium Foundation, Inc. that was a consortium of academic institutions and government agencies in the Mintal area of Davao.^{[citation needed]} He had retired from formally teaching creative writing and literature at U.P. Mindanao by 2018.^[1]

From 2007 to 2010, de Ungria served as Festival Director of Philippine International Arts Festivals.^[7] Around this time, he also sat on the board of judges for the Palanca Awards and chaired the Mindanao Science and Technology Park Consortium.^[13] He was a founding member of Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) in 1981,^{[7][5][14][13]} and a member of the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).^[7] He headed the Committee on Literary Arts at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), where he became a Commissioner for the Arts in 2009.^{[15][7][5][9][16]} In 2015 and 2016, he served as director-in-residence of Silliman University's National Writers Workshop.^[9][5][17] For many years, he was a fellow of the University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing in UP Diliman.^[6] He has served as a panelist in various writing workshops, including the UP Diliman, Silliman University, Davao Writers Guild, and the Ateneo de Davao Writers workshops.^[18] For his achievements in literature and writing, he was awarded the Gawad Balagtas by the UMPIL in 1999^[19] and the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan (Literature) by the City of Manila in 2007. He was also UP Artist 1 from 2009 to 2011 and 2012 to the present time^{[when?][citation needed]} and the recipient of nine National Book Awards as of 2025.^[10]

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Poetry

• R+A+D+I+O (1986)
• Decimal Places (1991), ISBN 9789712701030
• Voideville: Selected Poems, 1974–79 (1991), ISBN 9789718577851
• Nudes: Poems (1994), ISBN 9789712703324
• Body English (1996), ISBN 9789715421034
• Waking Ice: Poems (2000), ISBN 9789712709913
• Pidgin Levitations (2004), ISBN 9789715424110
• m'mry wire (2013), ISBN 9789715067089

Anthology (as editor)

• Luna Caledonia: Five Filipino Writers in Hawthornden Castle (1992), ISBN 9789718872000
• Passionate Patience: Ten Filipino Poets on the Writing of Their Poems (1995), ISBN 9712704297 and 9789712704284
• Catfish Arriving in Little Schools (1996), ISBN 9789712705106
• The Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction 1996 (1997), ISBN 9789715421997
• The Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction 1999 (2001) with Jose Dalisay Jr., ISBN 9789715423328
• The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in English from 1900 to the Present (2002) with Gémino Abad, ISBN 9715422144
• Fallen Cradle: Parents on the loss of a child (2006) with Agnes Prieto, ISBN 9789712717321
• Davao Harvest 2 (2008) with Tita Lacambra-Ayala, ISBN 9711006553
• The Best of Dagmay (2007–2009) (2010), ISBN 9718142231
• Tala Mundi: The Collected Poems of Tita Agcaoili Lacambra Ayala (2011), ISBN 9789715065924
• Habagatanon: Conversations with Six Davao Writers (2015), ISBN 9789715427746
• Voices on the Waters: Conversations with Five Mindanao Writers (2018), ISBN 9789715508650
• Songs Sprung from Native Soils (2019), ISBN 9789719094319
• Mindanao Harvest 4: A 21st Century Literary Anthology (2022) with Jaime An Lim and Christine F. Godinez-Ortega, ISBN 9789716780628
• Kalandrakas Part 1, 1890-1945: Stories and Storytellers of/on Regions in Mindanao, 1890-1990 (2022), ISBN 9786214482016
• Kalandrakas Part 2, 1946-1990: Stories and Storytellers of/on Regions in Mindanao, 1890-1990 (2022), ISBN 9786214481996

De Ungria's son Nikos died by suicide in 1998. Several of his subsequent poems focus heavily on this topic.^[9]