Gawani Domogo Gaongen is Kankanaey Igorot from Sagada, a rural town in the mountainous region north of the Luzon, Philippines. Her community is a rich source of inspiration for her writing, as indigenous traditions and rituals still mark phases in the agricultural (rice) cycle and celebrate major milestones in the human life. In 2015, she was awarded Writer’s Prize by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) for her poetry in Kankanaey.
She studied Community Development as her undergraduate course. She is currently taking her Master’s degree in Public Administration.
Her past jobs involved grassroots research and community development. Since 2012, she has been running a vegetarian restaurant that houses a small library and practices zero-waste management.
She sees many different kinds of birds daily from her window, a pair of hawks gliding in the sky every now and then, and fireflies dotting the darkness at night. She hopes that her children’s great grandchildren will see these things as signs of a good life and a great community.