THE NATIONAL Commission for Culture and the Arts awarded Sagada based poet Gawani Domogo Gaongen a Writers' Prize.
Gawani received the award for her collection of poems in the local Kankanaey dialect, "Sukat" with Christine Godinez-Ortega, head for the National Committee on Literary Arts and NCCA chairman Felipe de Leon, Jr.
Gawani finished her degree at the University of the Philippines Diliman with top honors on Community Development and continued to pursue a medical career at the same university in 2006.
Gawani now manages Gaia Café and Crafts in Sagada, Mt. Province
The award is a writing grant amounting to P250,000 to assist the winner during the writing stage of the entry piece, valid for one year and expected to have the complete manuscript for the writing project.
During the preliminary stage, Gawani submitted 10 poems from which after a year will be completed to the required thirty pieces for publication by the NCCA.
For this year, the biennial NCCA Writers’ Prize were given to five writers in different categories including poetry (Kankana-ey language), novel (Rinconada language), essay (Meranao language), short story (Kapampangan language) and drama (Kinaray-a language).
The last batch of NCCA Writers’ Awardees for 2013 were Ariel Tabag for novel in the Ilokano language, Joselito Delos Reyes for short story in Filipino, Hope Sabanpan-Yu for essay in Cebuano, Rafael Banzuela, Jr. for poetry in Bikolano and Jeremy Alexandre Evardone for drama in Waray language. They received the award during the 2014 Taboan Literary Festival in Subic.