Returning Home: Writing the Filipino Experience

As part of the Auckland Heritage Festival, join us at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero for an evening with Monica Macansantos, author of Returning to My Father’s Kitchen and Love and Other Rituals. Monica will read from her new essay collection, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen, before joining Camille Elemia for a wide-ranging conversation about loss, reckoning with family history, finding a sense of belonging, and the ways we nourish and remake ourselves across different places. About the author Monica Macansantos was born and mostly raised in the Philippines and has spent much of her adulthood in the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of the essay collection Returning to My Father’s Kitchen and the story collection Love and Other Rituals. Her work has been recognised through fellowships including the Shearing Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Marguerite & Lamar Smith Fellowship at the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia. She holds an MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in Creative Writing from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.