First launched in March 1948 by Cesar J. Amigo and Aida Rivera to promote high literary standards and genuine creative writing among students, Sands and Coral serves as the prestigious annual literary supplement to the student publication The Sillimanian at Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Philippines. This fifth edition, published in 1952, represents a critical development in institutional history as it highlights the newly established Writers’ Workshop on campus under the direction of foundational figures Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, which directly supplied the short fiction featured in this volume. The item showcases a distinct blending of post-World War II regional culture and expanding intellectual scholarship in the mid-20th-century Philippines. It contains pioneering literary research such as Bernabe Kapili's study on the integration of the traditional Cebuano balitao dance-song into Philippine national literature, which originated from his work as the first student to receive a master's degree in English from Silliman University. Furthermore, critical essays within the volume, like Dolores S. Feria's review analyzing the nostalgic, pre-war worlds of author Nick Joaquin, illustrate how the campus journal actively participated in shaping the national literary canon and evaluating postwar trauma and identity. Written mostly as an undergraduate initiative under faculty guidance, this edition stands as a key historical archive for the "Silliman Writers" movement and the evolution of Philippine creative expression in English.
Sands and Coral, Vol. 5 (Literary Supplement to The Sillimanian, Literary Magazine of 1952