CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of this year’s Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, held Sept. 1 at Peninsula Manila.
The judges, among them Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Jun Cruz Reyes, J. Neil Garcia, and Vim Nadera bestowed awards on 51 winners, 23 of them first-time awardees.
This year’s awards were also special for being a Novel-Nobela year (these categories are opened only on alternate years).
UP professor Jose Dalisay Jr. received the Gawad Dangal ng Lahi for his contributions to Philippine literature. A 16-time Palanca winner and Hall of Famer, Dalisay was also the evening’s keynote speaker.
* * *
Congratulations also to Krip Yuson and Gemino H. Abad, editors of “Bloodlust: Philippine Protest Poetry from Marcos to Duterte,” and to the contributors, on the book’s launch last Aug. 31 at the UP College of Arts and Letters.
The tome features the country’s finest poets in a “protest against the cavalier disregard of human rights and lives,” as Yuson says in his introduction to the book.
“Here, then, is the poet’s response to what is happening in our country—from the subtle to the outraged—in four languages. It has been three decades since Filipino poets have reassembled in pages of protest.
“Here are our poets, 65 of them in this collection, with a total of 133 poems. Now we join our voices with those of the rest of our fellow Filipinos who cannot abide by bloodlust.”
* * *
Congratulations in advance to Philippines Graphic magazine Editor-in-Chief Joel Pablo Salud, Literary Editor Alma Anonas-Carpio, and the rest of their team on their forthcoming literary night, the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards: Nick Joaquin Centennial.
To be held Sept. 13 at BHotel, Quezon City, the annual event bestows awards for the best short fiction and poetry that has appeared in the pages of the magazine in the past year.
The event will also celebrate the centennial birth year of Joaquin, known as the country’s greatest writer in English. A collection of his works, “The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic” was published earlier this year by Penguin Classics to international critical acclaim.
* * *
Congratulations as well to University of the Philippines professors Roland B. Tolentino and Rommel B. Rodriguez on the upcoming launch of the anthology “Wagi/Sawi: Mga Kuwentong Luwalhati at Pighati.”
Tolentino and Rodriguez edited this collection of stories that was published last year by UP Press. The launch, program, and introduction of contributors will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Oct. 19 at the Film Studio, UP Film Institute.
Also to be launched are 10 other titles by Tolentino: “Pag mabilis na umalis, baka di naman talaga dumating at iba pang kwento” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2017); “Indie Cinema at Mga Sanaysay sa Topograpiya ng Pelikula ng Filipinas” (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2017); “Kabataang Kulturang Popular at Mga Sanaysay sa Kartograpiya ng Disaster at Aktibismo sa Filipinas” (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2017);
“New Media at Mga Sanaysay sa Platitude ng Bagong Objek ng Media at Mediasyon sa Filipinas” (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2017); “Keywords Essays on Philippine Media and Neocolonialisms” (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016); “Araw: Mga Aporismo ng Pagkautal at Pagkaulol” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016); “Gabi: Mga Aporismo ng Pagtanga at Pagtunganga” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016);
“Contestations of the Nation-Space: Cinema, Transnationalism and Cultural Politics in the Marcos-Brocka Philippines” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2014); “#Pag-ibig – mga aporismo ng pagnanasa’t pagsinta” (Naga City: Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2014); and, co-edited with Gary Devilles, “Kritikal na Espasyo ng Kulturang Popular” (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2015).
These books are valuable readings for students of film and film theory, cultural criticism, cultural studies, and communication, as well as film buffs and lovers of Filipino fiction and creative non-fiction.
Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember, @artuoste
