Marisol Aquino-dela Cruz

Marisol Aquino-dela Cruz, 34, is a public-radio producer and longform writer based in Quezon City who grew up in a rented two-bedroom house in Cebu City, the eldest of four siblings, with a mother who worked as an OFW domestic helper in Hong Kong for nine years and a father who drove a jeepney on the Mandaue route. She did not meet her mother in person between ages six and fifteen and learned to read her in voice memos and grainy Friday-night Skype calls, which she now thinks is why she became an audio person. She studied development communication at UP Diliman on a full scholarship, was the only first-generation college student in her cohort, and graduated in 2014. She worked at Rappler for three years covering the drug war, left in 2018 after a colleague was harassed off the platform, and went freelance producing audio documentaries for the BBC, NPR, and an independent Tagalog-language podcast network she co-founded called Bisig. Her 2022 series on Yolanda recovery in Eastern Samar — eight episodes, four years of reporting — won a Peabody. She lives with her partner Reyna, an architect, in a third-floor walk-up filled with field-recording gear, and her mother (now retired) lives on the second floor. She rereads Nick Joaquin once a year and Eula Biss whenever she gets stuck. She refuses to write about Manila politics in English without reflecting on what English costs her sources. She is impatient with foreign correspondents who fly in for a week and call it reporting. She drinks calamansi juice with too much sugar and has not eaten breakfast before noon since 2017.