Celebrating with biographers at the 12th My Favorite Book Awards

MANILA, Philippines - The awarding of the year’s My Favorite Book winners is always a special time for the Philippine STAR Lifestyle section. Every year, we get to celebrate with weekly winners who were chosen as the best from the previous year’s published essays over great lunch and great speeches.

This year, it was all about biographies. The country’s top biographers and STAR columnists Nelson Navarro, Butch Dalisay and Krip Yuson shared their experiences in writing biographies about the country’s shakers and movers in politics, business and civil society.

Nelson’s latest work was the memoir of  Juan Ponce-Enrile and he is now currently at work on Jejomar Binay’s biography. Among Krip’s notable biographies are those of Jobo Fernandez, and Alfredo Yuchengco which was started by the late National Artist Nick Joaquin. Butch mentioned that his dream project is to write the biographies of those involved in the First Quarter Storm — both the activists and their jailers, whether now dead or alive.

National Book Store founder Nanay Socorro Ramos was happy to be exchanging anecdotes with STAR president and CEO Miguel Belmonte, head of the editorial board Isaac Belmonte, and Swatch Philippines president Virgie Ramos, our usual gracious host, who also bonded with Lifestyle editor Millet Mananquil, hosts and STAR columnists Reggie Belmonte and Tim Yap, now a TV star with his own show.

NBS’s Cecilia “Bak” Licauco and Crossings’ Presy Ramos,  along with  the third-generation Ramos children Miguel Ramos, Xandra Ramos-Padilla and Trina Licauco-Alindogan likewise mingled with STAR bosses and the Lifestyle staff at the brand-new branch of NBS in Glorietta — three floors of great books and school supplies! What more can you ask for?  The food by Gaita Fores was magnifico and had us coming back for seconds. 

The  Globe Telecom team, led by head for corporate communications Yoly Crisanto, gave away Globe Samsung Galaxy S3Mini to the top three winners and Samsung S385 to the five honorable mention winners.

The awards for 2012 were led by grand prize winner Inez  Reyes who wrote about Eat My Globe by Simon Majumdar; she won P50,000 in cash and gift certificates from NBS. Second prize winner was May C. de los Santos for her essay on Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs; she received P30,000. Third prize went to Lio Soriano who wrote about Stephen King’s On Writing; he received P20,000. The five honorable mention winners received P5,000 cash from STAR and P5,000 GCs from NBS. They were Gretchen Edelweiss Filart Dublin (Bata, Bata, Pa’no Ka Ginawa?), Katrina Gaw (Les Misérables), Denver Torres (Our Scene So Fair), Len Ocayo-Cristobal (Empress Orchid), and Laurence Arroyo (To Kill a Mockingbird).

It was a great way to spend a Tuesday afternoon talking with Nanay, the writers who have inspired us, columnists we work with and the young editors and writers from our YS, YStyle and Supreme sections.

Gatherings like this always make us want to read more, which has always been the point of these awards. And for the past 12 years, it has been a great way to get books in our readers’ hands.