BY CHRYSEE G. SAMILLANO
A resolution congratulating and commending lawyer Raymundo Torres Pandan for winning the grand prize in the Novel Category of the 2022 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for his novel, Bittersweetland, was approved by the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod Wednesday.
The resolution authored by Councilor Em Ang said the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, popularly known as the Palanca Awards, are a set of literary awards for Philippine writers. Usually referred to as the “Pulitzer Prize of the Philippines,” it is the country’s highest literary honor in terms of prestige.
“Bittersweetland is a novel for Negros, for its people, for the crop which sustains us, and which we must sustain to endure, but also to endure our bittersweet life, and is set to be published in December 2022 or early 2023,” it said.
Pandan has been a lawyer for 32 years and was once named as the country’s youngest law school dean in 1997 at the University of St. La Salle-Bacolod, the resolution said.
Aside from his novel Bittersweetland, Pandan also won the Cirilo F. Bautista grand prize for the Novel Category with his work entitled “When Will This War End?”, it said.
Pandan has also won two Palanca Awards for poetry in 2006 and for children’s poetry in 2012, the resolution added.
In 2018, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) granted him the Taboan Awards for his “masterful craft of poetry and fiction” and a “full life of exemplary service as committed defender of justice and staunch promoter of Philippines letter,” it said.
Pandan is the project director of Iyas National Writers’ Workshop based in Bacolod City, one of only four writers’ workshops funded by the NCCA, the resolution said.
The works and accolades of Pandan give pride and honor to Bacolod City and also gives inspiration to other budding Bacolodnon writers and literary artists, it added.*
