Established in 1948, Sands & Coral is the country's oldest student annual literary journal and a cornerstone of Silliman University’s distinguished literary legacy. Over the decades, it evolved from its original student-centric origins into a prestigious semi-professional space that showcased established giants of Philippine literature. The 2006 edition marks a deliberate structural redirection by its editorial team, explicitly subtitled "The Students Write Back." Breaking a four-year publication hiatus following the 2002 prose edition, this volume actively returns its pages entirely to the university's student body. It shifts its creative focus from traditional short stories and poetry to personal essays, pulling heavily from the institution's inaugural Sands & Coral seminar-workshop and writing classes. The text serves as an unfiltered historical archive documenting the authentic voices, everyday contemporary struggles, and stylistic shifts of Filipino student writers at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Sands and Coral (2006 Issue): Episode 2006: The Students Write Back