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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

Email: icasocot(at)gmail.com

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Monday, November 04, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | So Heaven



I finally received my copy of Isagani R. Cruz's new novel, So Heaven! Thank you, Milflores Publishing [ IG: @milfloresbooks ]! I was asked to give this a blurb, and I don't know how I found the time to read this, but I did, if not because going over the first novel by an acclaimed Filipino writer was such a privilege. And this is such an unusual novel, too! Congratulations, Sir Gani!

You can order this book on the Milflores website.

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Sunday, January 24, 2016

entry arrow4:43 PM | Lakambini Sitoy, Sweet Haven, and the Intricate Forces of Fiction

CATCH THESE TWO EVENTS TOMORROW! Sillimanian writer Lakambini Sitoy will give a homecoming lecture on the process of fiction writing, titled "Intricate Forces," for the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center Lecture Series on 25 JANUARY 2016, Monday at 10 AM at the American Studies Resource Center of the Robert and Metta Silliman Library.

Also on the same date, we are ​launching ​her first novel, SWEET HAVEN, at 6:30 PM at the University House.

The Philippine edition of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize-longlisted novel, published by Anvil, is the story of Narita Pastor who abandoned her illegitimate daughter for a new life in Manila. When a scandalous video of the girl becomes public, Narita must return to her parents and to Sweethaven, the community of her childhood, to perform an act of rescue. In search of the answers to her daughter's shaming, she follows a trail of evidence to reveal a web of family secrets, corruption, prejudice, and the barriers of social class. Sweet Haven was published in a French translation as Les Filles de Sweethaven by Albin Michel in 2011, and its English edition was put out by the New York Review of Books in 2014.

Ms. Sitoy is a teacher and creative writer. Her published work includes the books Mens Rea (1998)​ and Jungle Planet (2005). She received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom in 2003, was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008, and has received a Manila Critics Circle National Book Award and numerous prizes in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards. She holds an MA from Roskilde University in Denmark, where she resides and teaches English.





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Tuesday, September 08, 2009

entry arrow6:33 PM | Reminder to Self

Zadie Smith said this about editing one's novel:

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second -– put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal -– but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It’s an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it’s published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.

Well, it has been more than ten months since I "finished" and placed Sugar Land in a drawer. Do you think it's time to take it out and blue-pencil it everywhere? (An excerpt, by the way, is forthcoming in Ideya, De La Salle's journal for literature and the arts.)

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Friday, November 14, 2008

entry arrow10:36 AM | Chuck Won the Man Asian!

Here's one for Philippine literature! Miguel Syjuco's novel Ilustrado has won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize.

From the press release: A panel of three internationally acclaimed authors and experienced literary judges named Filipino author Miguel Syjuco winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Ilustrado, a fictional account of a young Filipino caught within a notorious scandal spanning over the Philippine history.

The panel of judges for the 2008 prize praised Ilustrado: "The shortlist for the Man Asian prize testifies to the great vitality of the novel in Asian societies undergoing hectic and unexpected transformations. In the end, we had to choose; and Ilustrado seems to us to possess formal ambition, linguistic inventiveness and sociopolitical insight in the most satisfying measure. Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly executed, it covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humour."

The prize winner was announced at a celebratory dinner at The Peninsula Hong Kong. Miguel Syjuco was awarded USD 10,000.

Ilustrado was selected from shortlist of five, including Kavery Nambisan's The Story That Must Not be Told, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, Yu Hua's Brothers, and Alfred A. Yuson's The Music Child.

Read an excerpt from Ilustrado here.

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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

entry arrow4:59 PM | Desaparesidos



The great Lualhati Bautista -- author of the novels Bata Bata Paano Ka Ginawa?, 'Gapo, and Dekada '70 -- is blogging her latest novel Desaparesidos. Click here to read the first two chapters.

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

entry arrow8:09 PM | Cape Engaño



The great Erwin Castillo is blogging a new novel. Chapter 1 has just been posted.

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