Leoncio P. Deriada was a Filipino writer and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of the Philippines in the Visayas in Iloilo.
He was born on January 13, 1938, in the town of Barotac Viejo, in the province of Iloilo in central Philippines but spent most of his life in Davao City in Southern Mindanao region of the country.
He earned his BA English degree at the Ateneo de Davao University with cum laude honors in 1959.
Of these seventeen, five are first-prize winners, and these include "The Day of the Locusts" (Short Story, 1975), "Mutya ng Saging" (Dulaang May Isang Yugto, 1987), "The Man Who Hated Birds" (Short Story for Children, 1993), "Medea of Siquijor" (One-Act Play, 1999), and "Maragtas: How Kapinangan Tricked Sumakwel Twice" (Full-Length Play, 2001).
[4] In the same year his book Ang Kalye nga Wala sing Kamatayon: The Palanca Award-winning Short Stories of Leoncio P. Deriada was published posthumous by the Division of Humanities of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas.