Top Palanca plum for fiction, poetry goes to Silliman studes

DUMAGUETE CITY, Aug. 14 (PNA) - Top prizes in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature went to two alumni of Silliman University in Dumaguete this year.

Dumaguete-based fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot won 1st prize for the Short Story in English category for his “Things You Don’t Know,” and Baguio-based poet Francis Macansantos also won 1st prize for Poetry in English for his suite of poems titled “Morphic Variations.”

This is the fourth Palanca win for Casocot, and the third for Macansantos, said Mark Raygan Garcia, Silliman University director for Information and Publications.

The judges for short fiction were J. Neil C. Garcia, Vicente Groyon III, and Charlson Ong, while the judges for poetry were Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Marjorie Evasco, and Jaime An Lim.

Casocot is currently a member of the faculty of the Silliman University Department of English and Literature, while Macansantos used to be a teacher in the same department but has now retired from teaching from the University of the Philippines in Baguio.

“This story is something quite personal to me,” says Casocot. “It is a meditation on faith, about believing and not believing, about pretending and coping, about the nuances of daily living that affect the humanity in all of us.”

Casocot’s "Sugar Land", a novel about Dumaguete, has also been long-listed in the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize, which is considered as the Asian Booker Prize.

The Palanca Awards is known as the Philippine equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

Awarded to the best annual literary works by Filipino writers since 1951, its roster of winners have included many of the giants of Philippine literature, including National Artists Edith Tiempo, Nick Joaquin, NVM Gonzalez, Francisco Arcellana, F. Sionil Jose, Bienvenido Lumbera, and Virgilio Almario.

Silliman writers have been regularly included in the winning roll announced every year, and top prizes have gone to such locally-trained writers as Edilberto K. Tiempo, Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, Elsie Martinez Coscolluela, Bobby Flores-Villasis, Leoncio Derriada, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Timothy Montes, Lakambini Sitoy, Merlie Alunan, Jaime An Lim, Anthony Tan, and Marjorie Evasco.