Dr. Will Liangco wins a National Book Award for his book, Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer and Other Misadventures

Dr. Will Liangco wins a National Book Award for his book, Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer and Other Misadventures. It's a remarkable book: funny, smart, compassionate, and not your usual medical narrative. I like it so much because I'm a medical oncologist who trained at PGH. But I imagine how the book can be a great gift to yourself and to your friends (in the medical field or otherwise), kids, nieces, nephews, inaanaks, and random neighbors who are thinking of going into the medical profession, or are burnt out by it.

His interview in Spot.ph has a pa-shout-out to the Creative Non-Fiction Writers' Workshop for Doctors by the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center of the De La Salle University. It's a welcoming and generative space for stories to be shared.

Why are there many doctors who are writers, too? "I think that just like everyone else, in whatever profession or stature in life, doctors have the need to express and share their own experiences, and be heard, whether this expression is in the form of music, poetry, or children’s literature," says Liangco. "It’s wonderful whenever we are able to create avenues for these stories."

In 2020, De La Salle University held a CNF (Creative Non-Fiction) Writers' Workshop for Doctors, which Liangco participated in as one of the selected writer-doctors. It is part of the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center's efforts to "boost collaborations and critical/creative exchanges between scientists and artists; to train medical practitioners in the art of life-writing; and to help immortalize the stories and contributions of our front-liners to this nation especially during these precarious times." The Philippine Society for Literature and Narrative Medicine was later created and spearheaded by Dr. Joey Tabula, one of the doctor-writers who served as a panelist in the workshop.