Famous Filipino Painters: Maningning Miclat was born a Filipino on April 15, 1972 in Beijing, China. She was known for her Chinese bamboo Zen paintings and poetry in three languages: Filipino, Mandarin, and English. In 1987, she published her first book of poems, Wo De Shi, in Mandarin, and held her first solo show of traditional Chinese painting, Maningning: An Exhibit of Chinese Brush Works. She had four more solo shows in her lifetime. Miclat became a Fellow of the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop in 1990 and won an award for a Filipino play there. She also became a Fellow of the Silliman National Writers Workshop. In 1992, she won the Art Association of the Philippines Grand Prize for a painting entitled Trouble in Paradise and her second book of poetry, Voice from the Underworld, was a finalist in the country's 2001 National Book Award.
In 2000, she fell from the seventh floor of the Far Eastern University in Manila where she was teaching at the time. In 2001, the Maningning Foundation was founded in her memory to celebrate the talents of young artists both visual and written.