PROGENY AS NEXT-GENERATION CREATIVES

Congratulations to Monica Macansantos for her 20th Annual Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship, entitling her to live and work at the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Georgia, throughout the fall of 2025.

- ALFRED A. YUSON

She also recently launched her nth book, Returning to My Father's Kitchen: Essays at the Majestic Repertory Theatre in Las Vegas, with support from the Black Mountain Institute.

A source of continued gratification over my engagement with creativity is sharing in the frequent news about milestones racked up by children of old friends—some of whom have passed on. A poet I had the good fortune of starting a friendship with in Dumaguete City was Monica's dad Francis "Butch" Macansantos, who became a regular in what is presently being nominated as a UNESCO City of Literature. Butch and I also met frequently in Baguio City.

Another writer-friend who adopted Dumaguete as a second hometown was fictionist Leoncio Deriada from Iloilo. We were fellow literature teachers at Silliman University at the outset of the 1970s. Our growing sons shared bikes and ninja items whenever we visited from Manila. Leo and I also frequently celebrated together on Palanca Night in September.

His daughter Dulce Maria, herself a writer-scholar teaching literature in UP-Iloilo, upholds her dad's literary legacy by organizing the annual Leoncio P. Deriada Conference on Teaching Literature and Language as well as other cultural activities for West Visayan writers, who also compete for the Deriada Prizes for Fiction in various genres.

Another Dumaguete transplant in the 1960s/70s was poet Merlie Alunan, who took over the Silliman Writers Workshop on years the Tiempos had to stay abroad during summer. Originally from Tacloban, Merlie became a professor emeritus of UP Visayas. She edited The Dumaguete We Know for Anvil in 2012, and has translated works from Ilonggo and Filipino to Waray. By the 1990s, my stints in Dumaguete led to friendship with her son Babbu, a terrific visual artist who painted on large cloth panels, besides operating a cafe-bar called Memento right across Silliman.