The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Alvin I. Dacanay
A radio-show host, a recent inductee to the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature Hall of Fame, a veteran journalist, and a former director of the oldest writers’ workshop in Asia are among the writers chosen to receive this year a lifetime achievement award from the Philippines’s largest organization of Filipino writers, it was learned recently.
In an online statement, the 41-year-old Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (Writers’ Union of the Philippines, or Umpil) announced that 10 creative writers will receive the Gawad Balagtas (Balagtas Award)—established in 1988 and named after Francisco Balagtas, author of Florante at Laura and regarded as the Prince of Tagalog Poets—at the organization’s annual congress on August 29 at Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.
Among them is Danton Remoto, chairman of what’s now called the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Party List and host of the TV5 radio show Remoto Control, who is honored for his English-language poetry. Recipient of various awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Palanca Awards and other writing contests, Remoto has published several books of essays and poetry, including Skin, Voices, Faces, Black Silk Pajamas and Happy Na, Gay Pa, and edited with poet-scholar J. Neil Garcia the landmark Ladlad anthologies of Philippine gay writing.
Another is playwright and screenwriter Rody Vera, one of two Palanca Hall of Fame inductees last year, who is recognized for his plays in Filipino. Lauded by some as one of the best dramatists of his generation, Vera wrote such full-length plays as Kung Paano Ko Pinatay si Diana Ross, Ralph at Claudia and Luna: Isang Romansang Aswang (which are collected in his book Tatlong Dula), as well as the scripts of theater and film director Loy Arcenas’s Niño and REquieme! He co-wrote the screenplay of Lav Diaz’s Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, for which they won an Urian award. As head of the Manila-based playwrights’ group The Writer’s Bloc and founding festival director of the Virgin Labfest, Vera has helped introduce a new generation of Filipino playwrights.
Also honored are Yen Makabenta, longtime newsman and currently an opinion columnist at The Manila Times, who is recognized for his essays in English; Victor Emmanuel Carmelo “Vim” Nadera Jr., Palanca-winning performance poet-novelist and former Umpil chairman and secretary-general, recognized for his Filipino-language poetry; and Susan S. Lara, National Book Award-winning author of Letting Go and Other Stories, recognized for her English-language fiction.
Lara was the director of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in Negros Oriental province’s Dumaguete City, founded in 1962 by previous Gawad Balagtas winners Edilberto and Edith Tiempo. Many Filipino writers, including Lara, Nadera and Remoto, were fellows of this workshop.
Completing the list of Gawad Balagtas recipients are Crisostomo B. Balairos, president of the Iloilo province-based writers’ association Sumakwelan Iloilo Inc., who is honored for his fiction in Hiligaynon; Calbayog City, Samar province-based Nemesio S. Baldesco Sr., an officer of the Eastern Visayan writers’ group Katig Writers Network Inc., for his poetry in Waray; Albay province-based journalist and academic Rafael A. Banzuela Jr., for his poetry in Bikol; Iligan City, Lanao del Norte province-based Marcelo A. Geocallo, for his fiction in Cebuano; and Linda T. Lingbaoan, for her fiction in Iluko.
Also to be honored at the Umpil congress are Dr. Erlinda Kintanar Alburo, former director of the Cebuano Studies Center and a retired professor at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, who will receive the Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez, named after the pioneering educator who wrote the Philippine short-story classic “Dead Stars” and given to the most outstanding literature teacher this year; and the Integrated Performing Arts Guild, the resident theater company of the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, which will get the Gawad Pedro Bucaneg—named after the Filipino poet who’s acknowledged as the author of the Ilokano epic Biag ni Lam-ang (Life of Lam-ang)—for being the most outstanding literary or cultural organization of the year.
Founded in 1974 and first headed by the late essayist Adrian Cristobal, Umpil is led by its secretary-general Dr. Michael Coroza, a Palanca-winning poet in Filipino.