Paz Marquez Benitez
Born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezón, Márquez Benítez authored the first Filipino modern English-language short story, Dead Stars, published in the Philippine Herald in 1925. Born into the prominent Márquez family of Quezón province, she was among the first generation of Filipinos trained in the American education system which used English as the medium of instruction. She graduated high school in Tayabas High School (now, Quezón National High School) and college from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. She was a member of the first freshman class of the University of the Philippines, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912.
Two years after graduation, she married UP College of Education Dean Francisco Benítez, with whom she had four children.
Márquez Benítez later became a teacher at the University of the Philippines, who taught short-story writing and had become an influential figure to many Filipino writers in the English language, such as Loreto Paras-Sulit, Paz M. Latorena, Arturo Belleza Rotor, Bienvenido N. Santos and Francisco Arcellana. The annually held Paz Márquez Benítez Lectures in the Philippines honors her memory by focusing on the contribution of Filipino women writers to Philippine Literature in the English language.
Though she only had one more published short story after “Dead Stars” entitled "A Night In The Hills", she made her mark in Philippine literature because her work is considered the first modern Philippine short story.
For Márquez Benítez, writing was a lifelong occupation. In 1919 she founded "Woman's Home Journal", the first women's magazine in the country. Also in the same year, she and other six women who were prominent members of Manila's social elites, namely Clara Aragón, Concepción Aragón, Francisca Tirona Benítez, Carolina Ocampo Palma, Mercedes Rivera, and Socorro Márquez Zaballero, founded the Philippine Women's College (now Philippine Women's University). "Filipino Love Stories", reportedly the first anthology of Philippine stories in English by Filipinos, was compiled in 1928 by Márquez Benítez from the works of her students.
When her husband died in 1951, she took over as editor of the Philippine Journal of Education at UP. She held the editorial post for over two decades.
In 1995, her daughter, Virginia Benítez Licuanan wrote her biography, "Paz Márquez Benítez: One Woman's Life, Letters, and Writings."
Source: wikipedia.org
“Love—he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.”
“Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.”