Monica Macansantos is the author of the essay collection, Returning to My Father's Kitchen (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, 2025) and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals​ (Grattan Street Press, 2022). She was recently a 2025 Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow with the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia, and a 2024-2025 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas.

​Born and (mostly) raised in the Philippines (with a five-year stint in Delaware), her work has appeared in Colorado Review, The Hopkins Review, Bennington Review, River Styx, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Katherine Mansfield and Children (Edinburgh University Press), among other places. Her work has also been translated into Czech and Spanish.

She earned her MFA in Writing as a James A. Michener Fellow from the University of Texas at Austin, and her PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her past honors include residencies at Hedgebrook, Washington State; the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska; the I-Park Foundation, Connecticut; Storyknife Writers Retreat, Alaska; and Monson Arts, Maine; in addition to a Love of Learning Award from the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Her work has been recognized as Notable in the Best American Essays 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2016, and has received finalist and honorable mention citations from the Glimmer Train Fiction Open.

She has completed a novel (based on her creative writing PhD thesis) titled People We Trust about three young people who come of age in Marcos-era Philippines. Her works-in-progress include a second novel about female friendship, as well as a second story collection about Filipinos at home, in the US, and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Learn more about her publications and awards here.

She is the daughter of the late poet Francis C. Macansantos, from whom she inherited her love of writing, laughter, and life. You can learn more about him here.

She is represented by Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts of HG Literary in New York City.