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 boy beneath the mango tree
As a Grade 5 student in Maragondon, Cavite, I sometimes stopped beneath a mango tree on my way home from school and imagined writing a book someday. More than four decades later, that childhood dream is becoming real. With two books forthcoming in 2027 and a novel following in 2028, I reflect on the long,…
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When danger looks like rescue
Vertigo Theatre’s The Lodger There is a Filipino saying I kept thinking about while watching Vertigo Theatre’s The Lodger: Ang taong gipit, kahit sa patalim kumakapit. A person in desperate circumstances will cling even to the blade of a knife. It is a saying about what desperation does to judgment. When choices narrow, something dangerous…
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Faithful disobedience finds another door
I haven’t written a blog post in a month. I could say I’ve been busy, which is true. I’ve been working with my editor Micheline Maylor and revising my poetry collection, Eating Rice, On Our Feet, which is coming from Frontenac House next spring. I’ve been meeting with Billy-Ray Belcourt as part of my mentorship…
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Before sunrise
For the past few days I’ve been waking up at four in the morning. Not because I’ve turned into one of those writers who swears by a 4 a.m. routine, coffee and meditation and a thousand words before the world stirs. It’s because two eleven-week-old Yorkie mixes, Lilly and Poppy, have their own ideas about…
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The best writing residency I never got into
It takes Boyd and me about 11 hours to drive from Calgary to our favourite campground. Whenever I tell people that, they usually ask the obvious question. “It must be spectacular.” Well, yes. But probably not for the reasons they’re imagining. This isn’t one of those famous national parks where every lookout has an Instagram…
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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,…
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.
