Ian Rosales Casocot, a Creative Writing educator and author, proves to be a master of many trades as he takes home triple honors in the English division of the 71st Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
Casocot stands among the select few writers who have won at least three Palanca awards across different categories in a single year.
He won second prize for the short story Don’t Follow Me, I Don’t Even Know Where I’m Going, one-act play The Midsummer of Manuel Arguilla, and poetry written for children Bisaya for All that We Gugma.
Primarily known for his speculative fiction and LGBTQ+-themed short stories, Casocot enjoys experimenting with various genres to challenge himself. “It keeps me on my writing toes,” he said.
The short story Don’t Follow Me, I Don’t Even Know Where I’m Going revolves around a character who finds it challenging to teach creative writing in a digital environment amid a global public health emergency. It alludes to Casocot’s personal reflections as well as emotional and mental health struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, his one-act play, The Midsummer of Manuel Arguilla, is inspired by the life of the famed Ilocano writer in English, Manuel Arguilla, who died at the hands of the Japanese military forces.
The play brings to life characters from Arguilla’s stories, highlighting a jailed protagonist who finds himself in dangerous times and engages in profound conversations about life and living.
In his poetry collection, Bisaya for All that We Gugma, Casocot pays tribute to the Binisaya language, crafting each poem around particular words like “gugma” (love) and “pahiyom” (smile).
He aims to introduce and teach them to non-Bisaya-speaking children, all while carefully considering rhyme, meter, and word choice – elements he confessed to be struggling with.
Interestingly, all three literary pieces were drafted at the same time, a month before the call for Palanca entries ended.
Casocot, who is from Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental, is one of the 54 winners of the 71st Palanca Awards.
He has been receiving awards from various literary award-giving bodies since 2002. A fiction and playwriting professor at Silliman University, he was also the founding coordinator of its Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center.*