A MULTI-AWARDED playwright was recently appointed junior associate of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies (CCWS).
Jose Victor Torres, a member of the Writers Bloc of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (Peta) Playwrights Development Program, will join Rebecca Añonuevo, Michael Coroza, Ramil Gulle, and Lourd de Veyra as junior associate of the center. F. Sionil Jose and Cirilo Bautista have been reappointed as senior associates.
Torres has won three Carlos Palanca Awards for one-act play in both English and Filipino. His play, Sandaling Tagpo merited him the first place in the Palanca Award for one-act play in Filipino in 1996.
Torres was also the scriptwriter of the movie Supremo: Ang Kasaysayan ni Andres Bonifacio which featured actor Gardo Versoza in the lead role.
Torres, a former Teatro Tomasino member, took up AB Journalism in UST and later worked as a reporter for the Manila Bulletin. He’s a Ph.D History candidate of the UST Graduate School, where he also finished M.A. History. He is currently chief of research of the Intramuros Administration.
Torres is also author of the book “Pananaw: Viewing Points on Philippine History and Culture,” published by the UST Publishing House last year.
Meanwhile, the CCWS has a new administrative secretary and program officer.
UST Faculty of Arts and Letters Literature coordinator Ferdinand Lopez will take over Prof. Erlita Mendoza as administrative secretary, while Paolo Enrico Melendez will replace Lopez as program officer.
Lopez, a 2001 British Council fellow of the Oxford Conference on the teaching of Literature, has an AB Journalism degree and a Master of Arts (MA) in Literature degree from UST. Currently, he is taking up Doctor of Philosophy in Literature at the De La Salle University.
On the other hand, Melendez is an AB Literature graduate of the University and is currently taking his MA in Literature at the UST Graduate School.
Melendez, a fellow in the second UST National Writer’s Workshop last April, was also last year’s recipient of the Gawad Ustetika Rector’s Literary Award. Teodoro Lorenzo A. Fernandez
