Nicomedes "Nick" Marquez Joaquin (Tagalog: [hwaˈkin]; May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English language.

Before becoming one of the leading practitioners of Philippine literature in English, he was a seminarian in Hong Kong – who later realized that he could better serve God and humanity by being a writer.

[1][2] Nicomedes “Nick” Joaquin y Marquez, fondly called “Onching” by close family and friends was born on May 4, 1917, in Paco, Manila.

[3] The Joaquins had lived a handsome life until Don Leocadio lost the family fortune in a failed investment on an oil exploration project in the late 1920s.

He enjoyed the “poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Vachel Lindsay to the stories of Anton Chekhov, to the novels of Dostoyevsky, D. H. Lawrence, and Willa Cather.

At age 17, he published his first English poem about Don Quixote, in the literary section of the pre-World War II Tribune, where he worked as a proofreader.

“The Woman Who Felt Like Lazarus” and the essay “La Naval de Manila” were borne out of this war period Joaquin had detested.

[5] Joaquin represented the Philippines at the International PEN Congress in Tokyo in 1957, and was appointed as a member of the Motion Pictures commission under presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand E.

Joaquin was also publisher of its sister publication, Mirror Weekly, a women's magazine, and wrote the column “Small Beer” for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Isyu, an opinion tabloid.

[5] In a critical study of his prose and poems, the subjects depicted his nostalgia for the past, church rituals, legends, the mysterious, the different shades of evil, the power of the basic emotions over culture, the freedom of the will against fate, the mutability of the human body compared to the spirit, and the like.

Such examples of works containing theological dimensions include “"Doña Jeronima”, “The Legend of the Dying Wanton” and “The Mass of St. Sylvestre” whose themes are said to be drawn from Spanish traditions.

Different analysis of Nick Joaquin's works on these stories found in Tropical Goth reveal the use of primordial and pagan symbols.

“Guardia de Honor”, and “The Order of Melchizedek” and while not as obvious, were present as thematic backgrounds in “Doña Jeronima”, “The Legend of the Dying Wanton”, “The Summer Solstice”, and “The Mass of St. Sylvestre”.

Critics make a connection of this theological reality used by Nick Joaquin to reflect Philippine culture and the intermingling of Christian and pagan values.

[6] National identity is a very important topic for Nick Joaquin as evident in his works such as La Naval de Manila, After the Picnic and Summer Solstice.

Our historians now say that the foreign war that Filipinos were made to fight, and for which they hewed timber, built ships, and gathered provisions, were of no concern to us and therefore not Philippine history.

Attempting to characterize stories of Tropic Goth as what critics referred to as a product of the Early Nick Joaquin would be deceptive for it was written, along with majority of his works, during the thirties.

Included in the first edition of Nick Joaquin's “Prose and Poems” were the titles “The Woman Who had Two Navels” (1961) and “La Naval de Manila” (1964).

Early Nick Joaquin, as Lacaba described through the example of Tropical Goth, made use of “lush” language as well as “baroque” once the readers get past the words used.

[9] Critics, such as Furay, define Early Nick Joaquin through his nine stories of Tropic Gothic which emphasizes his talents in Philippine writing in English.

Critics emphasizes that in the later works, there is a sharper emphasis on freedom and choice as seen in his publication in December 1975 titled “Fathers and Sons: A Melodrama in Three Reels” which was a dramatization of his earlier story “Three Generations”.

[9] Nick Joaquin's name as a literary artist is considered, by different university professors, as a key figure in Philippine literature in English due to the imparted truths of his writing.

In his essays, Nick Joaquin is said to employ real life situations through symbolic qualities reflecting certain social and cultural values.

[11] Nick Joaquin was able to publish a large body of literary works during his time and through this, he has had great contribution to Philippine literature in English.

According to different studies on literary journalism, works of Nick Joaquin serve as examples of social sciences applied to the arts[10].

This was further seen in his work “Philippine letters’ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which, according to scholars, showed de Manila's career which oscillates between fiction and non-fiction[10].

[11] Different literary scholars claim that the works of Nick Joaquin as de Manila exemplifies what he quotes as “good reportage with grace of style”.

One of de Manila's publication, “The House on Zapote Street”, was termed journalism by the author but is read much like his fictional works under the name Nick Joaquin.

As a member of the Philippine Free Press staff, Joaquin published weekly articles under his journalistic pseudonym Quijano de Manila.

His nominator, the Philippines Free Press editor Teodoro Locsin, remarked that Joaquin's work had raised journalism to the level of literature.