29/06/2026
"Poetry, for me, is a way of paying attention."
Filipino-Canadian writer Renato Gandia came to Canada in 1997 carrying thirteen years of seminary formation and a question he hadn't yet answered about who he was. Nearly three decades later, that question won him the 2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award — and two forthcoming books.
In our new interview, he talks about migration, faith, q***r identity, and writing from the space between the Philippines and Alberta.
I often find myself writing from that space between worlds—between the Philippines and Canada, between past and present, between who I was and who I am still becoming. Arun Budhathoki talks with Fi…