Conchitina "Chingbee" T. Cruz is a Filipina poet[1] who teaches creative writer and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City.
Formerly an INTARMED student, Cruz shifted to the University of the Philippines' Creative Writing program, from which she graduated magna cum laude and College of Arts and Letters valedictorian in 1998.a While on a Fulbright grant, she studied and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she received her MFA in Writing.
She is also the youngest poet in the anthology A Habit of Shores, the third part in Gémino H. Abad's three-volume collection of one hundred years of Philippine poetry and verse.
In September 2006, Dark Hours was reviewed by Andy Brown, the creative writing program director at the University of Exeter.
Cruz has won two Palanca Awards to date, one in 1996 for "Second Skin" and another in 2001 for "The Shortest Distance".