Unlearning the Silence
For years, silence was a language I knew well. Unlearning the Silence is a space for essays about faith, desire, migration, family, writing, and the many ways we remake ourselves. Written from Calgary by Filipino Canadian writer Renato Gandia, these reflections trace the long journey from who we were expected to be to who we are becoming.
WRITING
Novel, memoir and short fiction exploring complicated relationships, faith, belonging and love.
Anatomy of Compersion
A 92,000‑word literary novel about a woman, her bisexual husband, and his lover—asking whether love can stretch wide enough to include someone else’s happiness.
Unpriesting
Unpriesting is a memoir about the life that waits on the other side of a vow you never took.
Anthologies & Beyond
Published, poems, short fiction & essays in Magdaragat, Yay Queer All II, Beyond the Concert Hall, and more.
From the blog
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The book before the book
I woke at 4:30 a.m., before the light, to a bird singing into the breaking day. I wasn’t even in the sunroom yet. For several minutes, I simply listened. Curious, I opened the bird identification app on my phone. It told me the singer outside my window was an American robin. Soon another joined in,…
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The city in a cowboy hat
Every July, Calgary changes clothes. It begins almost overnight. Cowboy hats appear in office elevators. Plaid shirts replace business suits. Boots click across polished corporate hallways. Coffee shops play country music. Hay bales decorate the entrances of banks, hospitals and grocery stores. For ten days, the city seems to agree to become someone else. Or…
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The stories we wear, share and tell
I remember looking around the room during Ugat ng Paglalakbay and realizing I had seen this moment before. Not the paintings hanging on the walls, the photographs, collages and comics on display, or the poems being read aloud. Not even the conversations that lingered long after the formal program had ended. The feeling. It had…
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Interpreter of my father’s affection
On this Father’s Day morning, I am sitting in the sunroom watching birds gather at the feeder hanging from our porch. They arrive in brief bursts of motion. A sparrow lands, pecks at a seed, and disappears. Another takes its place. The feeder sways gently in the breeze. Somewhere beyond the window, the city is…
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The lives we don’t live
Monarch Campground, Yoho National Park — Across from our campground a mountain rises straight off the valley floor, still holding patches of snow in June. At its base Kicking Horse River, from glacial origins, runs pale blue and restless, carrying meltwater down from somewhere I can’t see. In the evening light I keep looking back…
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The first person who listened
Hours before the reading, my stomach wouldn’t settle. I had rehearsed the poems until the words were smooth as river stones, and still my body didn’t believe me. Then they called my name, and something steadied. I had chosen the bookends of my collection: “When They Ask Who I Live With” and “Citizenship Ceremony.” One…
Gandia Media
Stories that Connect. Strategies that Deliver.
I help organizations craft clear, purposeful stories that connect with people and drive action. With nearly two decades of experience in journalism, government communications, and strategic storytelling, I know how to turn complexity into clarity. Let’s tell your story in a way that resonates.
About
Filipino-Canadian writer and editor based in Calgary. Winner of the 2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry.
My work explores faith, migration, memory, belonging, and queer identity. Published in Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing and forthcoming in Beyond the Concert Hall, Yay! queer: Free and Queer, and The Leaves Still Fallow. I am the author of the forthcoming memoir Unpriesting and poetry collection Eating Rice on Our Feet.
Renato Gandia 