What are the stories that carry us home?

Join us for a keynote conversation with award-winning writer, poet, critic, and public historian Adrian De Leon

Across poetry, history, criticism, memoir, and food writing, Adrian De Leon’s work traces the movement of Filipino people, memory, land, empire, and belonging across oceans and generations. His books include barangay: an offshore poem, named one of CBC Books’ Best Canadian Poetry Collections of 2021, and Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America, winner of the 2024 Sally and Ken Owens Award from the Western History Association, with additional honours from the American Studies Association and The Shapiro Center for American History and Culture at The Huntington.

In this keynote event, De Leon will discuss the many forms Filipino diasporic storytelling can take: poetry as history, history as return, criticism as witness, and writing as a way of mapping what empire, migration, family, food, and memory leave behind. Together, they will reflect on what it means to write across genres, geographies, and generations, and how personal and collective histories can become part of a larger record of Filipino life.

In his practice, De Leon continues to expand the possibilities of Filipino diasporic literature and public history. This keynote invites audiences into a rich discussion on inheritance, return, and the stories that carry us home.