Andre Masayon Monte

(04/09/11)

Andre Masayon Monte is a Filipino-American writer. He was born in San Diego, California (1974), lived four years in Virginia Beach, and then settled in New Orleans when his father retired from the Navy. He started writing poetry in the seventh grade, carrying that into high school and winning two poetry contests in his junior and senior year. After graduating from Archbishop Shaw High School (1992), he spent a year at Nicholls State University in Thibodeaux, Louisiana before transferring back to New Orleans to attend Delgado Community College, where he received his Associate’s in Commercial Art. He continued his education at Louisiana State University, majoring in English in Creative Writing, when he caught the volunteer bug.

He was President of GBLSU for two years; worked with Spectrum Alliance for a number of years, particularly on the committee for the Louisiana LGBT Student Groups Conference (2000) and as a panelist for the Safe Space Campaign (2002-07); volunteered at the Lambda Center and served on the committee for the Baton Rouge Pridefest (2001); became a member of Metropolitan Community Church of Baton Rouge (2003) volunteering in various ministries and served an incomplete term on the Board of Directors; and spent two years with the Baton Rouge Pride Fund helping to put on the Q Film Festival (2005-06). He was very pleased to have landed the position of Co-coordinator for the Mission:UP Mpowerment Project (2005), working at Family Service of Greater Baton Rouge, but only fulfilled the position for six months when Hurricane Katrina placed his program on the first wave of budget cuts. Andre also volunteered when he could on various other community events such as the MLK Day of Service.

Andre moved back to New Orleans in 2007 to reassess things and to get his life back in line with his true passion: writing. In the meantime, he spent some time jointly working through AmeriCorps for CASA Jefferson Parish and Friends of CASA Inc., but realigning his sense of direction affected his commitments to his volunteer work and decided it best to stop volunteering for a while. He was fortunate to land a job as a clerk in fine jewelry retail with the Finlay Fine Jewelry Corporation, a company he started working for back in 1999.

After an eight month stint in Baton Rouge (August 2010 to March 2011) to tie up some personal and educational loose ends, Andre has now grounded himself in New Orleans and has begun working on his career by developing a project which has surprisingly brought together his education in Commercial Art, his experiences in volunteering and the non-profit sector, and his many years of writing. He is also currently working on his first novel.