Winning at the F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Awards

From left to right: National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, me (honorable mention), L. A. Piluden (honorable mention), Dominic Paul Sy (third prize winner), Joshua Carlo Pile (second prize winner),  the father of Joy Anne Icayan (first prize winner), and National Artist F. Sionil Jose (Photo taken from FSJ’s Facebook account)

Exactly a month ago today, I won at the F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Awards. Receiving honorable mention in the awards is perhaps the best thing that happened to my writing life this year. I’m not just talking about the award itself. Many other things happened in my three-day trip to Manila. I met old friends, learned of good news about the manuscript of my novel, had a three-hour lunch with National Artist F. Sionil Jose himself, and went to a museum and a gallery to see Kulaman Plateau burial jars.

“Day of Mourning,” the story that I submitted for the awards, is about the Mamasapano incident. Forty-four members of the Special Action Forces of the Philippine National Police were killed in the encounter, and the news outraged many Filipinos. My story, however, is not about the police officers. It’s told from the viewpoint of a Maguindanao woman whose son is a separatist rebel and may or may not have been killed in the skirmish. I remember being quite depressed right after writing the story. I felt that I had created something beautiful, but I was disconcerted that it was borne out of something that shouldn’t have happened at all.

I learned on October 26, during the awarding, that the organizers received 176 entries, all from Filipino aspiring writers who were thirty years old or younger, since only those who belonged to the age group could join. The three judges pared down the entries to twenty-two, from which they were supposed to choose the top three only. In a conversation after the awarding, one judge told me and the other winners that the judges decided to choose five finalists, and the organizers—the family of F. Sionil Jose—agreed. That’s how another writer and I came to receive honorable mention and ten thousand pesos each even if such awards were not included in the original call for submissions. And as promised, the top three winners received fifty, thirty, and twenty thousand pesos respectively.

I had not known before the awarding what specifically the place of my story was. I was just told that I was one of the five finalists and I should pack my bags because I was getting a free round-trip flight to Manila and a two-night stay in a hotel. It was a workshop mentor of mine who broke the news to me, rather accidentally. She congratulated me a few moments after I entered the library of De La Salle University, the venue of the awarding. I thanked her and said, “But I don’t really know if I’m a finalist or what.” She said, “It’s in the program.” I opened the glossy yellow paper that had been given to me at the entrance, and on it I saw my name—the fourth one from the top.

I love the certificate that I received—minimalist, black and white, onionskin.

My literary mentor had left by this time. Perhaps she had been afraid that I would be devastated to find out that I had not won the first prize, and she had not wanted to see me cry. I felt the opposite, though. I was delighted to receive honorable mention because it meant that I would have two honorable mentions this year; the month before, another story of mine had been included in the shortlist of six in the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards. I like it when good things come in twos. That’s why I always buy an extra copy whenever I see a notebook that I like and my account name in social networks is rj2ortega. The obsessive-compulsive in me might not have been very happy had I gotten a citation in one award and then a numbered place in another award. Besides, I had prepared myself for whatever that would happen in the F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Awards. In the hotel, I had told myself to be just thankful for whatever would be given to me because judges—and publishers, editors, critics, and ultimately readers—owed me nothing. If they appreciated my work, I would be thankful. If they didn’t, it would hardly matter; I had long discovered that I could not simply make myself stop writing. The only worry I had about not getting into the top three was that I would not have extra money to buy the books (and burial jars) that I might want to buy while in Manila, and it turned out that I had nothing to worry at all, for the honorable mention came with a cash prize. I was given an envelope right after the awarding.

The ceremony was short, maybe thirty minutes only. F. Sionil Jose and another national artist for literature, Bienvenido Lumbera, gave the certificates to the winners. What surprised me most was that F. Sionil Jose was visibly touched by the thirty-second acceptance speech that I gave, and I didn’t learn of what happened until days later, when I was already home and browsing Facebook about the event. A member of the audience posted on Facebook that my “words brought tears to Manong Frankie’s eyes.” I wasn’t able to see the national artist because he was behind me on the stage while I was speaking. But I remember that after the awarding, one of his daughters approached me and said that my speech had made her cry. To be honest, I thought she was just pulling my leg. I felt that my speech was for writers who had spent a life of sacrifices for the craft, and as far as I knew, the children of F. Sionil Jose went on to have successful careers but not as a fictionist like their father. Everything made sense to me after I read the Facebook post. F. Sionil Jose’s daughter must have cried because she saw her father cry on stage. My speech wasn’t earth-shaking or anything, but I spoke from the heart:

A few years ago, I decided to spend the rest of my life writing stories, and I believe I don’t have to tell the people here how difficult it is to stand by that decision. This award reminds me that I’m on the right path, that I’m doing the right thing. Thank you to National Artist F. Sionil Jose and his family and Philippine PEN. I am so honored and grateful. I will keep on writing, Sir Frankie. Madamo gid nga salamat.

What happened after the ceremony was a delightful swirl. TV5 took a video of us winners with F. Sionil Jose. The news came out on television a day after, and it can be seen on YouTube. Manila Bulletin also interviewed us and took our photos, individually and as a group, but as of this writing, the article has not come out yet. L. A. Piluden of Benguet (honorable mention) and Dom Sy of Quezon City (third prize winner) were really nice. I believe I struck an instant friendship with them. A professor approached me and said encouraging things about “Rajah Muda,” my novel manuscript. She was a judge in a competition to which I submitted the manuscript, and though the judges were not told of the identity of the authors, she later found out that the manuscript was mine because she was a staff in another competition to which I submitted the same manuscript. My work didn’t win in either competition, but she told me that in the competition that she judged, my manuscript was close second to the winner. (I learned weeks later from another judge that on the second deliberation of the judges, they were just choosing between my work and the eventual winner and it was like “choosing between a polished jade and a rough diamond.” The jade won. But a diamond is a diamond. It’s just waiting to be polished!) I was glad to find out that I had not wasted the eight months of my life that I had spent on that project. The director of a university press also approached me and said that the press would publish “Rajah Muda,” which I had submitted to the press a month or so earlier. I’m not naming, though, award-giving bodies and educational institutions here because the news given to me were not official.



That evening, I had dinner in Malate with Jake and Reno, two of my co-fellows at the 53rd Silliman University National Writers Workshop. Jake, who lives in Makati, had gone that morning to the office of the Philippines Graphic to get for me my Nick Joaquin certificate and copies of my two stories that appeared in the magazine the previous year. I felt like a child who was given free toys.

The next day, my fellow winners L. A. and Dom and I had a three-hour lunch with Manong Frankie and Manang Tessie, his wife. We first met in Solidaridad, the bookshop that the Jose family owns, and then we ate in an Indian restaurant nearby, and then we walked back to the bookshop. At 91 years old, the national artist is still so full of energy when he talks. He told us at the outset to ask him questions about writing because he wanted to share or pass on to us his personal views and techniques on the craft. We were no longer so intimidated by him this time because the previous day, he had showed us the F. Sionil Jose Collection in the La Salle library, which contains his own books, his drafts, and one hundred of his favorite books by other authors. I was already familiar with most of what Manong Frankie said, for I had read interviews of him and I had also been studying on my own how to be a good fiction writer. What struck me most among the things that he said was this advice: “Use folk tales and ennoble them.” He said this was what Homer and Yeats did. I realized that this was what I had been trying to do and this was what I wanted to do. The advice is now at the top of my pantheons of advices, along with Butch Dalisay’s “Push the narrative,” which he said while critiquing my story at the 20th Iligan National Writers Workshop.

Manong Frankie has to walk with a cane and needs some assistance, so on our way to and from the Indian restaurant, he held on to my arm. That gave me a chance to ask him a few more questions. I asked him if he had a secret diet. He said, “Nothing. I eat anything.” I also asked him some things about politics, but I won’t quote here his answers. If you’re familiar with the man, you probably know that his views sometimes cause tempers to flare. When we returned to Solidaridad, he pointed to the shelf at the counter where his books were displayed. “Choose two books, each of you,” he told my fellow winners and me. I was ecstatic. I had prepared for it! Earlier, before meeting Manong Frankie upstairs, I had reserved copies of the American edition of the five-part Rosales Saga, the most famous of Manong Frankie’s works. Dusk costs nearly one thousand pesos and is the most expensive. The Samsons and Don Vicente cost nearly five hundred pesos each and contain two books each. So when Manong Frankie made us choose two books that we could have for free, I presented The Samsons and Don Vicente. He didn’t seem to mind that I was being wise. In fact, he decided to give us more. L. A., Dom, and I also received a copy each of Short Stories, which contains works that are “culled from the author’s five volumes of short fiction.” Needless to say, the books were all autographed.

I now have the complete five-part Rosales Saga and the best stories of F. Sionil Jose, and three of these four autographed books are gifts from the National Artist himself.

I could spend a whole day just listening to F. Sionil Jose. Unfortunately, we had to bid goodbye to him at about three in the afternoon. L. A. had to travel back to Baguio, Dom had a class in UP Diliman, and I had to meet Reno to see with him the limestone burial jars in Museum of the Filipino People and in a private gallery in Intramuros. I can’t name the gallery for now and my posts about my trip there won’t be online until late next year because I’m wary of making the information public. I don’t want to help spread the news that the Kulaman Plateau artifacts can be openly bought as though they’re ordinary gadgets. I’m hoping for a miracle to happen in the next few months and for the jars to be returned to their original home.

Reno and I spent the evening in Makati with Camille, who was also a fellow at the 53rd SUNWW. I would commit a literary sin if I forgot to mention that Camille had “workshopped” the story that I submitted to the F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Awards. My win is partly due to her careful reading of my draft and incisive comments. Jake also joined us every now and then, like a butterfly in a garden. We hanged out in a 24/7 convenience store and decided to spend the whole night talking. I guess we truly missed one another; it was our first time to meet in person after a year and a half, after the workshop. I gave them Dulangan Manobo trinkets that I had bought from Kulaman Plateau. When morning came, I headed straight to the airport, taking home with me my honorable mention certificates, my signed copies of F. Sionil Jose’s books, my photos of Kulaman jars in Manila, and a couple of intangible things that I kept in my mind and heart.

On my plane to Manila, I had a good view of Mt. Matutum despite the haze from Indonesia. I also had a glimpse of Mt. Apo. On my way back, I had a close and clear look of Taal lake and volcano.