Contact: 

If you are interested in making contact, do feel free to send your thoughts, questions or comments to rochita.loenen.ruiz@gmail.com. I will do my best to reply. 

About Rochita:

Born and raised in the Philippines, Rochita currently resides in The Netherlands where she works as a community facilitator and artist with a focus on writing, storytelling, artmaking and activism.  She has organised online writing Sessions for BIPOC youngsters, has led workshops for the Other Futures Festival, FIBER artfestival, for Stichting Bayanihan and for the WereldMuseum. She is a facilitator for the LIMBO art workshops for the LGBTQ+ asylumseekers community, and is a consultant and a facilitator for the Moving Love film project which seeks to uplift and empower voices from the LGBTQ+ asylumseekers community.

She is a participant of the Spring School’s first Co-creation Lab, held and organised at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in Spring of 2025, where she was invited to facilitate a workshop on social science fiction and visionary writing.

Her approach is influenced by indigenous practice, by the principles of kapwa and bayanihan as well as by the writings of other community activists and thinkers. In no particular order, she is inspired by the works of Adrienne Maree Brown, Aminata Cairo, Octavia Butler, Edouard Glissant, Rolando Vazquez, Leny Strobel, Donna Haraway, Ursula Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl and Sara Ahmed are sources of inspiration.

Her current focus is in stimulating and encouraging makers, thinkers and dreamers to explore beyond established ways of telling story and using language.  She is invested in different approaches and different ways to create and co-create within and with communities and sees story as a tool that can be used to influence and bring change in the world.

Her recent work includes explorations in collaborative and collective story creation and story making.

As a cancer survivor, she is also interested in exploring narratives around nurture and care and the challenges that arise from living with an invisible disability.

She maintains an online presence at rcloenenruiz.com.

Writing:

Rochita’s first publication was a short story, inspired by growing up in Ifuago. It was published in Philippine Panorama. Her poetry and creative non-fiction have been published in PATMOS (an international publication of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture), Isip-Isak (the local version of PATMOS), and the Second Hay(na)ku anthology. She has also co-authored an inspirational book for Overseas Filipino Workers entitled Hope Away from Home.

Rochita attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle in 2009. She was the recipient of the Octavia Butler Scholarship in 2009. Her work has been shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award and has been mentioned and included in various anthologies.

Rochita’s speculative work has appeared in a variety of online and print publications. In 2021, she released the chapbooks Colonial Dreaming and A Small Assemblage under Alternate Munabol Productions.

Her essays and reviews have been published in a variety of venues and she wrote a regular column called Movements for Strange Horizons. (2013-2014)

She also writes and publishes in Dutch and has been included in anthologies published in The Netherlands.

Workshops attended: 

Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, Seattle (2009)

Milford Writer’s Workshop, Wales  (2018)

Janis Ian’s Creative Masterclass, Stella Adler school of Acting, New York (2015)

Spring School Co-Creation Lab at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (2025)

( Press release from the Carl Brandon Society)

Art and Music:

Art and music are part of the tools I use when developing workshops for groups. I have a formal education in classical music, majoring in classical piano with a minor in voice. I am currently following classes in portrait painting.

*Photo credits: Banaue Rice Terraces by Joash Pio Ruiz