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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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,…
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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…
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 