Monica Macansantos

1 month ago | writersdigest.com | Monica Macansantos

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” the Booker Prize winner said, pausing in his signing to give me a curious look. I was embarrassed by the attention he was giving me, perhaps because I felt I didn’t deserve it: I was another MFA graduate with no book out yet, and whose manuscript, a short story collection, had failed to sell after my agent shopped it around.

1 month ago | lithub.com | Monica Macansantos

When I was growing up in the Philippines, our small resort town had none of the gleaming bookstores I’d later encounter as a graduate student in America, whose tall shelves containing crisp new releases made me feel inadequate and unlearned. The bookstores I knew were hole-in-the-wall shops tucked inside narrow alleyways of my hometown’s public market or the upper floors of old buildings, without so much as a street sign to advertise their presence.

Mar 1, 2025 | riverstyx.org | Monica Macansantos

Darkness had fallen on Cuba Street with a certainty that felt unusual and unforgiving to Ruth when she disembarked from her bus at six in the evening. Restaurants and shops had switched on their lights, for it couldn’t be helped: summer had ended, and they had all wound their clocks forward, pushing themselves into a darkness that would spread into their days like spilled ink as they headed into the winter months.

Dec 25, 2023 | electricliterature.com | Jo Lou |Monica Macansantos

Skip to content Reading Lists Working on your craft doesn't have to break the bank Residency programs provide a myriad of benefits to writers and artists: the chance to escape the pressing obligations of everyday life, to have a quiet space to work, to find inspiration in a new environment, and to draw on the cultural milieu of being surrounded by fellow artists. It’s an opportunity to turn inwards and reflect on the work in progress, a chance to grow personally and artistically. These...

Dec 18, 2023 | electricliterature.com | Jo Lou |Monica Macansantos

Skip to content Reading Lists Focusing on your craft doesn't have to break the bank I was a young MFA student when I attended my first artists’ residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. I had heard of these places nestled in the woods or in small-town America where writers and artists were provided with a private bedroom and studio space, as well as meals or a meal allowance, with the only expectation that they spent the majority of their time working on their art. What I...