Literary luminaries
Nine individuals and a literary organization received this year’s 38th Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas during the 51st National Writers’ Congress of UMPIL or Writers Union of the Philippines held last Saturday at the Gimenez Gallery in UP Diliman.
Playwright Al Santos gained the award for Play in Filipino for his significant contributions to Philippine theater, literature, and education. His production Cry of Asia I-IV, an Asian multicultural theater collaboration featuring actors from 16 countries, was staged in international arts festivals, including the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe and the Tokyo International Performing Arts Festival. Santos won first prize in the Palanca Awards for Full-Length Play for Mayo A-Beinte Uno Atbp. Kabanata, and the Gawad Aurelio Tolentino for Selda Kuwatro, while his children’s television co-production Bulilit won a Catholic Mass Media Award. He has also authored a graphic novel, Unang Engkantada.
The awardee for Children’s Literature in Filipino was Christine S. Bellen-Ang, former director of the Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices. Her retelling of the stories of Lola Basyang became a series of 20 picture books that received a special citation from the National Book Awards. In 2008, Lisa Macuja Elizalde’s Ballet Manila premiered the ballet interpretation of three of these stories. Her book Rosamistica was a finalist in the Gintong Aklat Awards, while a collection of her plays, Batang Rizal at Iba Pang Dula, won the National Book Award for the Best Anthology in Filipino.
Most of the awardees have similarly racked up various national prizes, attesting to the Gawad Balagtas as an ultimate reward for lifetime achievement. For Literary Criticism in English, earning the distinction was Isidoro M. Cruz, a professor at the University of San Agustin (USA) in Iloilo City. He has won National Book Awards for Literary Criticism / Literary History, as well as Palanca and Philippines Graphic poetry prizes and first prize for short fiction from Philippine Panorama. He served as the secretary of the National Committee on Literary Arts (NCLA) of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) from 2014 to 2019.
Receiving the award for Fiction in Ilokano was Joel B. Manuel, an educator, writer, linguist, and filmmaker who has won multiple awards from the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) and the Palanca. He is a four-time grantee of the NCCA as a recognized pillar of Ilokano literature and culture. His novels were serialized in Bannawag, with his Dispersiones winning the 2012 NCCA Writers’ Prize for the Ilokano novel. Last year, he was presented the Pedro Bucaneg Award, the highest recognition given to an Ilokano writer by the Gunglo Dagiti Mannurat nga Ilokano iti Filipinas (GUMIL Filipinas), an association of Ilokano writers in the Philippines and abroad.
This year, Joel M. Toledo was among the three youngest writers to receive the Gawad Balagtas trophy donated by notable sculptor Manny Baldemor, with all of them being born in 1972 (the others being Bellen-Ang and Lana). For his six published collections, Toledo won for Poetry in English, capping his 2006 NCCA Writers’ Prize, Palanca awards, and the international Meritage Press Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize from the UK. Twice a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Poetry Residency in Bellagio, Italy, Toledo was also a poetry fellow of the 2011 International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, USA. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at the UST.
Here’s a poem for Toledo’s upcoming book Seasonal Adversities, recently shared for Earth Day, titled The Neutral—“Tree in the mind,/ In the forest, in/ The backyard./ What do you see,/ The cut-down lumber,/ Firewood? Or trail/ Leading to nest,/ Root, a kind of space/ A child’s body can/ Occupy. You need/ To picture it, not just/ Speak of it. The axe’s/ Function no different/ From the parsing:/ The sap is the ink/ Doubling down on/ The idea, smudging/ The page. There is/ no way around this.”
Rodolfo Robles Lana Jr, won for Screenplay in Filipino. A resident playwright of Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). “Jun” transitioned into writing screenplays and collaborated with Marilou Diaz-Abaya on critically acclaimed films, including Jose Rizal in 1999, which was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. He is the youngest Filipino to be inducted into the Palanca Hall of Fame. He continues to write and direct films that receive acclaim in the international festival circuit. His film Mga Kuwentong Barbero won the Best Director award at the Madrid International Film Festival.
For Fiction in English, it was Maria L. M. Fres-Felix, an M.B.A. candidate at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. “Dada” spent years in the banking sector before starting out on creative writing. Her short stories won Palanca prizes and the Philippines Free Press award. Her first book ‘Sup? was Grand Prize Winner of the Pilar Perez Medallion for Teen Writing. Her latest book, Crime Time, was released by Anvil Publishing in 2017.
The winner for Essay in English, Marian Pastor Roces, is an independent curator and critic whose research interests include international art events, museums, identity politics, cities, and clothing. She is the founder, president, and principal partner of TAO, Inc., the Philippines’ only museum and exhibition development corporation. Among her key accomplishments are The Philippine Pavilion at the World Expo in Japan (2006), Spain (2008), China (2010), and Dubai (2020), as well as the Museum of a History of Ideas at UP Manila, and recently, the Bangsamoro Museum for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Her first book of essays, Gathering: Political Writing on Art and Culture, was published by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in 2019. Her book Mindanao Textiles is in press in London, while her The Difference between Tikar and Mat is being published by the Singapore National Gallery of Art.
The distinct Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez that is awarded to outstanding teachers went to Shirley O. Lua, an associate professor at the DLSU Department of Literature. She is a leading scholar of Chinese-Philippine literature, diaspora studies, and film. She sits on the boards of the Manila Critics Circle and the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino. She authored 44 Cineastas Filipinos, a coffee-table book on Filipino filmmakers. Her essays have been widely published.
The award for outstanding literary organization, Gawad Pedro Bucaneg, went to Ing Akademyang Kapampangan (AKKAP), originally known as Academia Pampangueña o Urian ning Amanung Kapampangan, established in 1936. It organizes various literary activities to preserve and promote the Kapampangan language and culture. In 2023, AKKAP successfully executed a project funded by the NCCA—Pamagdulap karing Talasulat: Documentation of AKKAP Writers—as part of the organization’s month-long celebration of its founding.
The theme for UMPIL’s national congress was “Paggigiit ng mga Katutubong Wika’t Panitikan sa mga Karunungang Pandaigdig (Asserting Indigenous Languages and Literatures in Global Knowledge).”
Keynote speaker was Dr. Alicia P. Magos of UP Visayas, a social anthropologist, literary researcher, and translator. Serving as director of the Center for West Visayan Studies of UPV Iloilo, she is an acclaimed expert on Panay Bukidnon culture, with her lifelong work promoting this indigenous group. Her 1992 book, The Enduring Maaram Tradition: An Ethnography of a Kinaray-a Village in Antique, is a classic in West Visayan studies on the remnants of babaylanism culture. She received the Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez from UMPIL in 2017 for outstanding service as a teacher and scholar of Panay epics.
The Writers’ Forum 1 on “Decolonial Practices” was conducted by Dr. Antoinette Talaue-Arogo of DLSU Manila and Dr. Roselle Pineda of UP Diliman, while Forum 2 on “Performing Cultural Resources” had Dr. Alvin B. Yapan of AdMU and Steven Patrick Fernandez of MSU-IIT.
Until 2026, UMPIL is led by Michael Coroza as chair; Susan Lara as vice chair; John Enrico Torralba as secretary-general; Romulo Baquiran Jr. as treasurer; Clarissa Militante as auditor; and board members Paul Castillo, Abner Dormiendo, Jazmin Llana, Diandra Ditma Macarambon, Vim Nadera, Aldrin Pentero, Joey Tabula, and John Iremil Teodoro.
