Why you should visit Dumaguete, the literary capital of the Philippines

PHILIPPINES – I do not use tourism brochures in Dumaguete. I visit a bookshop, pick up a paperback by a Negrense author and use that as my guide to the city before me. Or I chat with a local, which is the oldest form of literature anyway.

Dumaguete was designated a UNESCO Creative City of Literature in October 2025, a globally recognised title for what locals have always known: This quiet seaside city in Negros Oriental, a province in south-eastern Philippines whose natives are called Negrenses, produces an outsized number of the country’s most venerated writers.