Described by one reviewer as a book that “takes us to places in the self where words do not exist, where thoughts glimmer and perish before they can threaten us with their fangs and claws,” Larry Ypil’s first book, The Highest Hiding Place, won nearly every award in his native Philippines, including the Madrigal Gonzales First Book Prize, the Philippines Free Press Award, and the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award. Widely published in both the U.S. and abroad, Larry is a regular columnist for the Sun Star Weekend, and now serves as the Writer-in-Residence at Yale University’s campus in Singapore.

“For anyone who has fallen in love with the Essay, I don’t think there’s any other place one would rather be than the Nonfiction Writing Program. When I first moved to Iowa for the program, I was beginning  to work on a book about the Philippine Exposition at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, so when I discovered that objects from that very fair happened to be housed at the Natural History Museum at the University of Iowa, just a few blocks from where I had just moved, I took it as serendipity...Much is said about the discipline that’s necessary for writing, about the hours logged in at one’s desk, and the painstaking task of revision. And the NWP taught me all that. But what it also permitted was the wonderful confluence of a city whose spirit allows one to discover one’s own voice, professors who understand what it takes to radically challenge one’s own work, and most importantly the companionship of peers who may very well be the best writers of their generation: each one talented in their own right, and all of them generous. I came to the NWP wanting to write the essay better; I came out of it knowing how to sing it.”