Laurel Flores Fantauzzo is the author of MY HEART UNDERWATER (Quill Tree Books, 2023) and THE FIRST IMPULSE (Anvil, 2025). Her essays have appeared in High Country News, The Baffler, the New York Times, and elsewhere.
She has been named a Philippine National Book Award finalist and a PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize finalist. She was a Fulbright journalism fellow, a Hedgebrook resident, and a grantee of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
She has taught writing and literature at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and Ateneo de Manila University.
She currently lives with her wife in Metro Manila.
Photo by Noah Asanias