Journalist, Palanca awardee Lina Sagaral-Reyes, 63
MANILA, Philippines — Journalist and Palanca awardee Lina Sagaral-Reyes died on Saturday at the age of 63, the Cagayan de Oro Press Club (COPC) announced.
“A multi-awarded journalist and artist through the years, she was an advocate for women’s rights and better access to mental health services for all,” COPC said in a statement.
As one of the directors of the COPC Journalism Institute, COPC added that Sagaral-Reyes “fostered collaborations with other organizations and drafted programs to enhance the media community.”
READ: Inquirer Visayas bureau wins big at Globe media awards
Sagaral-Reyes was a former correspondent at the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Mindanao Gold Star Daily. She was also an environmental journalist that earned several awards through her investigative reports.
READ: PDI correspondent tops HOLCIM journalism awards
Article continues after this advertisementHer exposé on the sand dredging for the establishment of an international resort earned her the Jaime V. Ongpin Award for Investigative Journalism in 1998.
Article continues after this advertisementShe was also a recipient of the National Science and Technology Journalism grand prize for an investigation into the algal bloom in Macajalar Bay.
She also won the Globe Media Excellence Awards in 2020 for her report on the corporate pineapple farms and their questionable carbon-negative claims. Her news report titled “Women hold mental health caregiving fabric in Oro” also won from the same award-giving body in 2019.
Further, the Philippine literary icon won first place in the Palanca Awards for Literature in 1987 for her poem titled “Tree Without Leaves.”
“Tree Without Leaves”
By Lina Sagaral-Reyes
How your leaving unleafed me.
Wide wide lakes of leaves,
The crackle of breaking
Underfoot.
Memory became a bare crown
Of boughs as taut as the dark-eyed
Nipples of women
Facing the honest mirror of fears.
“You have strength I can’t name,”
Once you told me.
Now you must
Know: as winds churn
The leaf-lakes below,
I stand
Rooting with the power
You knew
and named Nameless.
On the rough nodes of my evening
Fireflies nestle,
Blooming.
