Rochel Ellen Bernido

(also known as Rocky Bernido) is a Filipina bilingual and experimental essayist.

Among the hundreds of entries submitted worldwide, she was hailed as a finalist by the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award for demonstrating distinction in writing. She also became the sole recipient of the creative nonfiction fellowship at the IYAS La Salle National Writers Workshop from a pool of over a hundred applicants in 2025. The same piece then bested 400 entries and was chosen to be part of the 25 outstanding contributions to the 19th issue of Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature.

For her creative nonfiction, she received multiple awards from the Normal Awards for Gender-inclusive Literature, the University of the Philippines’ LIKHAAN: Institute of Creative Writing, and San Beda’s Red Chronicles.

She grew up in Payatas—the site of the infamous landslide of garbage in the Philippines, which crushed hundreds of houses in the early 2000s. Having spent nearly two decades of her life there, and being at the receiving end of the negligence of various local government units, her writing is greatly informed by ecocriticism and intersectional feminism. In her experimental essays, she sees legal forms (e.g., curriculum vitae, ID, etc.) and transforms them into formats that can be used as effective mediums to engage readers and narrate her story.