- CHERYL G. CRUZ
A unanimous resolution commending Bacolodnon lawyer and professor, Raymundo Torres Pandan, for winning the grand prize in the novel category of the 2022 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, was approved by the Sangguniang Panlungsod of Bacolod Nov. 9.
Pandan won in the novel category, for his work titled “Bittersweetland”, which 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,” Councilor Em Legaspi Ang, main proponent of the resolution, said.
The awarding will take place on Nov. 30 at Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, the city said.
The novel, meanwhile, will be published next month or early 2023. Pandan said in an earlier PIO report that “Bittersweetland” was written in a span of one month.
Ang noted that the works of and accolades for Pandan “give pride and honor to the City and inspiration to other budding Bacolodnon writers and literary artists.”
Pandan has been a lawyer for 32 years and was named in 1997 as the country’s youngest law school dean of the University of St. La Salle Bacolod. He was co-counsel for the petitioner in the leading freedom of expression case, “Diocese of Bacolod vs. Comelec,” the city said.
Aside from his novel “Bittersweetland”, Atty. Pandan also won the Cirilo F. Bautista Grand Prize for the Novel Category for his work “When Will This War End?” in 2015; and two Palanca Awards, for poetry in 2006 and for children’s poetry in 2012, the resolution said.
The Palanca citations 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.”
Ang also said that the National Commission for Culture and the Arts bestowed on Pandan 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”.
Pandan is the project director of the Iyas National Writers’ Workshop that is based in Bacolod City, one of only four writers’ workshops funded by the NCCA./CGC
