Palanca Awards

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The Palanca Awards or Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature is the Philippines' most prestigious and most enduring literary awards and is dubbed as the "Pulitzer Prize" of the Philippines.^[1] Most, if not all, important or major Philippine authors have one or more Palancas in their belts. For some, especially to a young fictionist or poet, winning a Palanca is a sort of a "baptism of fire" denoting or announcing that one has arrived in Philippine literary circles.

1 History
2 Winners
3 Palanca Hall of Fame
4 References

[edit] History

Don Carlos Palanca Sr. was a man who by hard work, self-study, and integrity rose to become a successful businessman. He was a patron of educational institutions and instilled in his children the value of education. His heirs decided it fitting that his name be commemorated in an endeavor that would help enrich the country's cultural heritage. Thus, the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature was established in 1950.

The aims of the awards have been to help develop Philippine literature by providing incentives for writers to craft their most outstanding literary work; and to be a treasury of the Philippines' literary gems from Filipino writers and to assist in its eventual dissemination to the people, particularly the students.

The awards started with the Short Story category in English and Tagalog.

Through the years, as the awards elicited overwhelming response, new categories were added: One-Act Play in 1953, Poetry in 1963, Full-Length Play in 1975, Essay in 1979, Novel in 1980, Short Story for Children in 1989, Teleplay in 1990, and Screenplay in 1994.

In 1997, three new divisions were opened. These were the Iloko, Cebuano and Hiligaynon Short Story. To encourage writing by our youth, the Kabataan (Youth) Essay for high school students was opened in 1998. And in 2000, a new category was added: Future Fiction, a separate genre of the short story that involves a looking beyond into the future to transcend the boundaries of the present.

The harvest of literary works is just as impressive. As of year 2000, it has a collection of 28 novels, 12 in English and 16 in Tagalog; 128 three-act plays, 54 in English and 74 in Tagalog; 289 one-act plays, 131 in English and 158 in Tagalog; 300 groups of poems, 162 in English and 138 in Tagalog; 142 essays, 70 in English and 72 in Tagalog; 367 Short Stories, 167 in English, 164 in Tagalog, 12 in Cebuano, 12 in Iloko, and 12 in Hiligaynon; 85 short stories for children, 43 in English and 42 in Tagalog; 42 Teleplays, 5 in English and 37 in Tagalog; 22 Screenplays all in Tagalog; 18 Kabataan Essays, 9 in English and 9 in Tagalog; 6 Future Fiction, 3 in English and 3 in Tagalog.

The Carlos Palanca Foundation regularly publishes anthologies of winning works, with each anthology covering all winning literary pieces of a certain category (e.g. Short Story in English) in a decade (e.g. the 1980s).

As of 2000, the Director General of the Awards is Sylvia Palanca-Quirino.