Durham · UK
Karina
IC La'O
writer, editor, copywriter
Awe had bloomed in Mayumi as she eyed her mother's silhouette. The woman moved with the night as if she were a part of it, a being half here, half there in the darkest of shadows. Mayumi had wondered then if she, too, would become such a halfling. Now, she had to prove that she was.from Do Not Look For Me
A scene, in your hands
A pivotal moment from Do Not Look For Me, translated into a short choice-driven hypertext. Set in colonial-era Philippines: a babaylan's apprentice caught mid-ritual. Four endings, seventeen paths, no good answer.
1881 · Panay, Philippines · Night
A mother is in need of her daughter's protection.
§ 01
Selected work
Five pieces — a novel in progress, a novella excerpt from my MA dissertation, a short fiction piece published by UEA, and a feature script — alongside a recent editing credit at Cambridge University Press.
Do Not Look For Me
Three generations of one Filipina maternal line. On Panay in 1881, a girl tries to save her babaylan mother from a friar's lash. In 1925, a daughter sets out to uncover what her own mother buried. In 2015, a granddaughter steps into the Quezon City house she was kept out of her whole life. Each one hears the others, whether she believes in them or not.
This novel is the practice majority of my MPhil thesis-by-practice at the University of East Anglia, sitting alongside a three-part critical essay on the contemporary re-imagining of the babaylan (the precolonial priestess whom Spanish Christianisation renamed aswang) in the Philippine comic, Ella Arcangel. To be submitted by September 2027.
What does it mean to write the babaylan back into a world that was built to replace her?Read the first excerpt of Mayumi's narrative thread
Mila & Eden
At a Catholic international school in Hong Kong, Mila and Eden love each other. One is rich. One is not. The novella moves between the girls they were and the women they became. A bildungsroman.
For the excerpt: Mila in the fifth grade is trying to navigate complex topics such as sex and classism. As an adult, she is meeting Eden's mother for dinner after a decade of distance.
Read the excerptDark Justice
A single end-to-end edit of Mark du Rond's Dark Justice: Inside the World of Paedophile Hunters for Cambridge University Press & Assessment. The engagement carried the manuscript through the final stage of editorial work — a developmental read for structure and through-line, a chapter-by-chapter copyedit for cadence, register, and tense, and a final slow proofread against house style. Difficult material, handled at the sentence level. Acknowledged in the published book.
Little Things
A recovering drug addict is on the precipice of a relapse and remembers why he decided to quit to begin with.
Read the storyOh, Winona
A feature-length screenplay as the practice element of my undergraduate final year project entitled Girlhood: The Adolescent Girl Through Male Narratives in Film. A boy-meets-girl story that deals with trauma, perception, desire, and acceptance.
Read the script§ 02
Editing
Freelance editing for novelists, academics, and publishers. Three things, slowly.
Manuscript critique
Developmental notes on structure, voice, through-line, the unsolvable middle. Returned as a six to ten page letter, in conversation.
Novels · short fiction · memoir
Copyedit
Sentence-level work. Cadence, register, tense consistency, the things a writer cannot see in her own page. Tracked changes returned chapter by chapter.
Fiction · long-form non-fiction
Proofread
A final, slow pass for typos, citation consistency, and house style. Read once for sense, twice for the eye, once aloud.
Pre-print · pre-submission
Recent: a 65,000-word manuscript for Cambridge UP. See Dark Justice in selected work.
§ 03
Copy & Brand
How I pay for the writing life. Brand strategy and copy for companies whose voices I respect.
Kasdena
Strategy, voice, content. Building the language of a young tech company from the inside.
April 2026 – present
Baker & Bloom
Wrote and refined marketing copy and internal communications in a consistent brand voice, designed and shipped promotional campaigns and graphics through cycles of cross-team feedback, ran daily operations alongside the COO and teaching/admin staff, and served as primary client contact across Hong Kong and international markets.
Hong Kong · 2021 – 2025
EMPOWER, Heritage and Cultural Diversity Forum
Designed and delivered an interactive cultural-heritage workshop for secondary school students (adapting in the room based on student response), coordinated event logistics from planning to delivery, and produced promotional materials that lifted turnout and engagement.
UEA · 2024 – 2025
§ 04
About Me
Born in the Philippines, raised in Hong Kong, currently in the UK doing an MPhil thesis-by-practice on the contemporary reimagining of the babaylan in Philippine comics. My novel-in-progress, Do Not Look For Me, is about women, lineage, and what survives colonial erasure. Across all my works, I write fiction that tries to show readers the parts of themselves they have not yet seen.
§ 05
Contact
For editing inquiries, a paragraph on the manuscript and your timeline is the most useful thing you can send.
karinaiclao@gmail.com