Gina Apostol


Gina Apostol is a Philippines-born writer based in the United States.

Early life and education

Born Gina Lourdes Delgado Apostol, the author was born in Manila and grew up in Tacloban. She was the second of children raised by their artist-mother Virginia. She graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman and earned a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.

Career

Her American debut novel, Gun Dealer's Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book award and was shortlisted for the 2014 Saroyan International Prize. She found out about the PEN/Open Book nomination on the same day she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer, and found out she had won on her way to undergoing surgery - a bilateral mastectomy.
Her 2018 novel, Insurrecto, was one of Publishers Weekly's 2018 Ten Best Books, and was shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Portions of her short story, “The Unintended,” which was published in the Manila Noir anthology edited by Jessica Hagedorn, appear in the novel.
Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Philippine National Book Award Juan C. Laya Prize for the Novel.
She has contributed to the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy.
In an interview, Apostol said that her favorite novelist is Elena Ferrante.

Literary works