Anvil bags Madrigal-Gonzalez best first book award

Anvil Publishing’s book “All My Lonely Island” won the best first book award at the 17th Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award.

Victorette Joy Campilan, the author of the book, said her work was inspired by her own experience as a third-cultured kid, who spent her “formative years” in different foreign countries.

“I wrote All My Lonely Islands not just because I felt the need to process my Bangladesh experience. More than anything else, I wanted to give representation to a group of people called third-culture kids or TCKs,” Campilan said.

The award is given to the best Filipino writer's first book and alternates each year between books written in Filipino and English.

Campilan said her parents worked for an international non-governmental organization, so her family had to move from one country to another and learn how to “synthesize” the different cultures and form their own identity.

The winning author said she felt alienated upon entering the University of the Philippines Diliman, where Campilan studied Communication Research.

“I was lost in landscape and culture… [I] cannot understand the lingo and things that people were fighting for,” Campilan said.

Campilan said she foundcomfort solace amid her lonely day in reading Philippine literature.

“I barely encountered local literature about the TCK experience. … [N]o one was going to write it for me, that apparently, I will have to do it myself, it was terrifying simply because I didn’t want to confront myself,” Campilan said.

Campilan’s book started as a nonfiction essay in Marjorie Evasco’s nonfiction class and turned into a 20-page short story under Kimi Tuvera’s fiction techniques class. It became her thesis for her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at De La Salle University.

In 2015, the book won the Grand Prize at the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards.

Aside from “All of My Lonely Islands,” UST Publishing House’s books, “Writing Naked: A Memoir” by Arnie Quibranza Mejia, “The Reddest Herring” by Francisco Guevarra, and “Mariposa Gang ang Other Stories" by Catherine Torres were hailed as finalists.

The awarding ceremony, the first event of the UP Writers’ Night, was held last Dec. 1.