Literature professor Lorena Santos wins 34th Romeo Forbes Children's Story Writing Competition

The Center for Art, New Ventures, and Sustainable Development is pleased to announce the results from its 34th Romeo Forbes Children's Story Writing Competition. Maria Lorena M. Santos shall be receiving the cash prize of forty-five thousand pesos for her story The Salakot Flowers. A total of 88 entries, all based on the artwork by Abi Dionisio, were received for this competition.

Maria Lorena M. Santos is an Associate Professor who teaches Literature and Language courses at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has published several academic articles and a book chapter based on her research on Philippine adaptations and appropriations of Western texts. She has written two environmental children’s books in Bikol and English, Elias Asin an Salog Naga (Elias and the Naga River) and Kakanon an Hardin (Eat Your Garden). 

She tells us that while she has always followed CANVAS’ story competition, Abi Dionisio’s contest piece was the first one that inspired her to write her own story. “The winter clothes and whimsical haystacks did not seem very Filipino to me at first,” she shares, “until my eyes settled on the rosy hues of the woman’s hair and clothing and the tiny pink flowers inside the straw tents. These made me think about farmers and rice fields and the idea of a Philippine Narnia under an evil spell. At the time when I wrote this story, the painting spoke to me about the kind of hope I was feeling—and perhaps many others were feeling—for our country, the kind of hope that we all still need to feel.”

CANVAS holds the Romeo Forbes Children's Story Writing Competition at least twice a year, open to Filipinos worldwide. The first and only of its kind, it invites writers to pen a children’s story inspired by a painting or sculpture by CANVAS’ chosen local Filipino artist. 

That same artist will then bring the winning story to life through a series of around 20 new artworks. These are finally showcased in a major solo exhibition and used as illustrations for the ultimate offspring of this unique collaboration: a full-color children’s book which could reach public schools and communities in the Philippines under CANVAS’ One Million Books for One Million Filipino Children Campaign.