Atom Araullo on winning a Palanca Award for the first time: 'It's an absolute milestone'

Atom Araullo just bagged the first prize in the essay category at the 70th Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for "Letter from Tawi-Tawi" essay, which marked Araullo's first-ever Palanca Award.

In the awarding ceremony held at the Marquis Events Place in Bonifacio Global City on Wednesday, Araullo accepted the award and delivered an inspiring speech.

In an exclusive interview with GMA Integrated News, the award-winning Kapuso journalist said that winning a Palanca award is an indescribable moment in his career.

"It's an absolute milestone," Araullo said.

"A few years back, I challenged myself to have the discipline to write long-form stories, and I think it's a different creature altogether with the type of writing [that] we do for television," he added.

Araullo said that writing is a rich platform to tell the stories of people.

"I hope these kinds of stories stand the test of time, [and] serve as a snapshot of the time that we did it so that people from 10 or 20 years from now, even beyond, [could] go back to the story and understand what was going on at that moment in time," he added.

"Letter from Tawi-Tawi" mirrors a small portion of our countrymen in the Tawi-Tawi experience. However, Araullo believes that the issues raised in his essay are interconnected to form a bigger picture.

"If we want to move forward as a nation, we must address these [issues] collectively," he ended.

"Letter from Tawi-Tawi" tells the story of a teacher with a floating school, a fisherman who taught himself Tagalog, and an 8-year-old dreamer of a girl from a small community in Tawi-Tawi.

Established in 1950, The Palanca Awards is the longest-running literary competition in the Philippines and is considered the "gold standard" in writing excellence.

Congratulations, Atom! -- BAP, GMA Integrated News