Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author who was born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, and now lives in Toronto. Austria-Bonifacio earned a graduate degree in Immigration and Settlement Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University. She is also a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her stories have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies.
Fiction
Reuniting with Strangers
Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and destroys his new home.
Everyone wants to know why—and everyone has a theory. But unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, the answer isn’t so simple.
From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Austria-Bonifacio takes readers into the kaleidoscope of the Filipino diaspora, uncovering the displacement, estrangement, resilience and healing that happen behind closed doors.
Awards and Honours
2024 Toronto Book Awards–Fiction (Finalist)
Anthology
Changing the Face of Canadian Literature
