At least for the past four years? Was it second or third prizes only?
From the horse's mouth, Apo Agca (Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa), one of the perennial judges of the contest:
"I don't think any of these entries deserves a first prize. A first prize indicates artistic capability, quality of the work, and a clarity of vision and insight.
"The language, generally, is not the best that I expected. It lacks creativity, restraint, elegance, and the capacity to suggest symbolic meaning.
"We must demand more from our Ilokano fictionists. What we have here is the same format we have seen since time immemorial, the same opera-like stories, the same age-old issues that could be solved by using the magic want or uttering abracadabra.
"We are suggesting to our writers, this: Hey, you shape up. We don't award you the first prize because you came in first in the ranking. We are awarding the first prize because that first prize meets all the criteria of a first prize, of the highest prize."
Addendum from the Lebanese spiritual writer Kahlil Gibran who wrote the masterpiece, The Prophet, published in 1923, that he considered his greatest achievement:
"I think I've never been without The Prophet since I fist conceived the book back in Mount Lebanon. It seems to have been a part of me...I kept the manuscript four years before I delivered it to my publisher because I wanted to be sure, I wanted to be sure, that every word of it was the very best I had to offer."
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"Preach the gospel at all times; whenever it is possible use words."--St. Francis of Assisi
"We live forward but we understand backward." --Kierkegard
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