M. Evelina Galang height - How tall is M. Evelina Galang?

Galang advocates multilingual fiction, that is, writing that combines English with the characters’ heritage language, without translation.

Galang's writing explores the experiences of Filipino immigrants and first-generation Filipino Americans. “M. Evelina Galang's work spans generations with her writing of young Filipina-Americans and the surviving World War II ‘comfort women.’”

In 2014 Galang was named one of the “100 Most Influential Filipinas in the World” by the Filipina Women's Network (FWN), for her public activism, and her behind-the-scenes work as an activist, educator and administrator.

Galang's second novel, Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery (2013), marketed to Young Adult readers, was nominated for the 2014 Teen Choice Award, named a Young People Against the World book recommendation by the Northwest Asian Weekly, and it was selected for the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer Project Recommended Feminist Literature List `from Birth through 18.

Her activism has brought Galang invitations to the White House in 2013 and 2012 for briefings on Asian American and Filipino American affairs, to the State Department for lunch with Hillary Clinton and President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines in 2012.

Upon her return to the United States, Galang joined the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami, where she is a professor of English. She became director of the program in 2009.

She was the outreach coordinator of the 121 Coalition, lobbying for passage of House Resolution 121, which called on the Japanese government to publicly apologize to former comfort women in Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The United States Congress House passed Resolution 121 on July 30, 2007.

One Tribe, Galang's first novel, won the AWP Series for the Novel Award in 2004, while still in manuscript. Set in the Filipino-American community of Norfolk, Va., it was published by New Issues Press in 2006. It won the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award for Fiction.

In 2003 Galang edited Screaming Monkeys: A Critique of Asian American Images, an anthology of essays, poetry, illustrations, advertising, and pictures. It won ForeWord Magazine's Gold Book of the Year Award for 2003, as well as the Gustavus Meyers Outstanding Book Award in the Advancement of Human Rights for 2003.

Since 1998, Galang has been researching the lives of the women of Liga ng mga Lolang Pilipina (LILA Pilipina), a group surviving Filipina “comfort women,” forced into sex camps by the Japanese army, who came forward to make their stories public.

Her Wild American Self, written as Galang's MFA thesis, was published to acclaim in 1996. The New York Times Book Review praised the story collection for its "elegant, mesmerizing style," and said, "the brief, chant like monologues that frame the collection are as lyrical as prayers." It was named a Times Notable Book.

Over the same period, Galang pursued an MFA in creative writing at Colorado State University, completing her degree in 1994. After teaching creative writing at Old Dominion University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Iowa State University, Galang received a 2002 Fulbright Research Fellowship, allowing her to spend eight months in the Philippines researching the stories of surviving comfort women.

Galang earned a degree in radio, TV, and film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. She briefly worked at an NBC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin, as a producer and on-air arts/entertainment reporter. Relocating to Chicago, she forged a 20-year career as a script and continuity supervisor in TV commercial production.

M. Evelina Galang (born Harrisburg, PA in 1961) is an American novelist, short story writer, editor, essayist, educator, and activist of Filipina descent. Her novel One Tribe won the AWP Novel of the Year Prize in 2004.