Awards

The U.P. Institute of Creative Writing established the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award in February 2001 through the initiative and generosity of the Madrigal-Gonzalez family. Its aim is to encourage writers who have published a first work in English or Filipino to continue in the pursuit of excellence in the literary art by providing a degree of relief from financial pressures in order that he or she might focus on the next literary project.

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. 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.