A young Filipino writer’s odyssey toward home, in the wake of the loss of her poet father
Feeling untethered after her beloved poet father passes away while she is living abroad, Monica Macansantos decides to return to the Philippines to regain her bearings. But with her father gone and her adult life rooted in the United States and New Zealand, can the land of her birth still serve as a place of healing?
In fifteen richly felt essays, Macansantos considers her family’s history in the Philippines, her own experiences as an exile, and the parent who was the heart of her family’s kitchen, whether standing at the stove to prepare dinner or sitting at the table to scribble in his notebook. Macansantos finds herself remaking her father’s chicken adobo, but also closely rereading his poems. As she reckons with his identity as an artist, she also comes into her own as a writer, and she invites us to consider whether it is possible to carry our homes with us wherever we go.
Monica Macansantos was recently a Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and is an incoming Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow with the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia. Born and raised in the Philippines, her books include the essay collection, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, 2025), and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (2022). Her work has recently appeared in River Styx, Lit Hub, Bennington Review, and Poor Yorick, among others. She earned her MFA in Writing as a James A. Michener Fellow from the University of Texas at Austin, and her PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington.
Meet Monica Macansantos
Time: Jul 30, 2025 07:00 PM Auckland, Wellington
