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Romalyn Ante FRSL is an award-winning Filipino-born British poet, novelist, and editor. She is based in the Midlands and currently sits on the editorial board for Poetry London.
Romalyn was born and raised in Lipa, Philippines, and migrated to the UK in 2005. She writes in English as her second language. In 2012, she began writing poetry after completing her nursing studies and becoming a registered nurse.
Her debut collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto, 2020), was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was Observer’s Poetry Book of the Month, and was named as one of The Poetry School’s Best Poetry Books of 2020. Her second collection, AGIMAT (Chatto, 2024), was awarded the Society of Author's Arthur Welton Award, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and Observer Poetry Book of the Month.
Her debut novel, The Left-Behind Child, will be published by Chatto in August 2026. In 2025, she received the Royal Society of Literature's Literature Matters Award to write the first draft of her novel-in-progress, Tanker Boys.
Romalyn was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, the Silliman University Fellowship, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a lifetime honour that includes 'the best writers in or from the UK today'.
She founded Tsaá with Roma, an interview series with poets and artists designed to engage, inform, and inspire the public. This initiative has since expanded to include generative workshops for writers. She is also the co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine dedicated to poets who write in English as a second or parallel language.
Romalyn has judged international poetry competitions, including the Poetry London Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Competition.
In addition to her literary pursuits, she has years of experience as a specialist nurse, CBT therapist, and clinical lead within the NHS.
Before her debut:
In 2019, Romalyn was appointed Poet-in-Residence at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust and Hosking Houses Trust.
She is the first East and Southeast Asian poet to win the Creative Future Literary Award and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017), as well as the Poetry London Prize (2018). She has also received the Society of Authors’ Foundation Award, Developing Your Creative Practice (2019), and the Artist’s International Development Fund (2017), which supported the completion of her debut poetry collection.
Her poetry pamphlet, Rice & Rain (V Press), won the 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Poetry Pamphlet.
Romalyn’s work has been featured both in literary and mainstream platforms, such as BBC World News, TEDxNHS, World Literature Today, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3 The Verb, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue UK, Southbank Centre, Book Week Scotland, Birmingham Literature Festival, Verve Poetry Festival, and others.
Praise for her work
'Spellbinding.' – The Observer
‘Captivating, playful, moving, witty and agile... an unforced poet with a lightness of touch and fortitude’ – The Guardian
'Romalyn Ante is a poet to fall in love with’ – Liz Berry, author of Black Country
'Ante's poems are like embers, pared back to a slow-burning emotional core’ – Times Literary Supplement
'An alchemical wonder of a poet:.’ – Fiona Benson, author of Midden Witch
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