There is always a sense of awe and satisfaction when we come across a very young writer who finishes their first book, a sense of defiance that says: I have done the impossible. Especially if the first book is a novel. For Dumaguete writer Stefan André Solon, who is all of 28, that seeming impossibility takes the shape of Tears of the Forgotten, a bruising, fast-paced novel that fuses elements of investigative journalism, political corruption, and the lore of the engkanto into a thriller both Filipino and universal.

When I ask him what the novel is about, he is disarmingly honest: “On a personal level, this book is about proving to myself that I could finish something this ambitious. I had carried the idea for a long time, and writing it was as much about self-discipline as it was about storytelling. It taught me that an idea can manifest in the real world if you commit to it. I also wanted something to call my own, something I could hold in my hands and say, ‘Yes, I made this. I am an author.’”

That last line is something every budding writer in Dumaguete has whispered into the salty night, walking the Rizal Boulevard with stories like ghosts perched on their shoulders. Here, in this small seaside city that birthed Bobby Flores Villasis and Elsa Martinez Coscolluela and Lakambini Sitoy, that nurtured Edith Tiempo and Edilberto Tiempo and Rowena Torrevillas, that continues to midwife the dreams of young scribblers like Michael Aaron Gomez and Lyde Sison Villanueva and F. Jordan Carnice, one does not simply become a writer. One is made by the city itself, with its campus workshops and smoky cafés, its long afternoons under acacia trees, its gossip and myths.

Stefan joins that literary lineage with Tears of the Forgotten, a book where a young campus journalist, Del, finds himself investigating the trafficking of engkantos whose tears are bottled and sold as elixirs for the rich. It is a wild conceit, but also a metaphor sharp as a blade: the powerful draining the vulnerable to feed their endless appetites. In one of the novel’s most chilling moments, buyers discuss these bottled tears with the same casualness they would apply to fine wines or diamonds. [Disclosure: this novel was developed under my fiction workshop for the creative writing program at Silliman University.]

But what makes the book remarkable is how deeply it is rooted in place. Stefan admits: “I wanted to create a world inspired by my home. The province of Lugo and the city of Azucapuerte are modeled after Negros Oriental [and Dumaguete City], and I drew on my own experiences of living here. I wanted to capture the idiosyncrasies, the stories passed through the grapevine, and the legends handed down by our forebearers, and weave them into a universe that feels alive.”

These words reminded me of the long tradition of Dumaguete writers who turn the local into the mythic, who see in the ordinary surfaces of the city—vendors selling fruit outside Hibbard University, boys guarding motorcycles in the parking lot—the beating heart of an epic. It is not hard to see Kiki, the orange seller of Stefan’s novel, as an echo of every girl we’ve passed on the Boulevard at dawn, selling fish or peanuts, invisible until we choose to look.

For Stefan, the act of writing the novel itself was not easy: “It was daunting at first. I had carried this story idea in my head for a long time, but the act of putting pen to paper felt overwhelming. I had never written anything this long before. But every great journey starts with a first step, so I took it. I just started writing. My mindset was simple: write it first, you can always make it better later.”

There is a lesson here for every young writer in Dumaguete—or anywhere—who is paralyzed by the enormity of their own ideas. Just start. [Or join a workshop.] The novel will find its way if you let it breathe. In Stefan’s case, it was through workshops, revisions, and multiple rounds of editing. He says: “Looking back at my earliest notes and summaries compared to the finished novel was almost cathartic. It was incredible to see how the story had grown, how simple ideas evolved into complex characters and themes, and how the world of Lugo gradually revealed itself on the page.”

In the end, Tears of the Forgotten is more than just a finished manuscript; it is a manifesto of intent. Stefan says: “With this novel, I wanted to contribute to that legacy of human creativity, to add my thread to the fabric of stories that connect us all.”

That he does so from Dumaguete is no accident. The city has always been a haven for creatives, especially writers. It allows a young writer like Stefan to dream of turning the rot of local corruption into narrative, to transmute engkanto tears into a metaphor for systemic exploitation, and to do so under the gaze of acacia trees and the steady presence of the sea.

Stefan dreams big. “In the long run, my dream is to build the world of Lugo into something larger than a single novel, a franchise that could take shape not only in books but also in films, games, and other forms of storytelling.” Ambitious? Yes. But ambition is precisely what Dumaguete has always demanded of its writers. It demanded it of the Tiempes when they built the Silliman University National Writers Workshop out of nothing but conviction. It demanded it of the countless young authors who came after, from Cesar Ruiz Aquino to Marjorie Evasco to younger generations still finding their voice.

Now it demands it of Stefan Solon, who with Tears of the Forgotten has written not just a novel, but a declaration: that the stories of Negros, of Dumaguete, of the Philippines, belong not only to myth or to the margins, but to the center of literature itself. And if Dumaguete is indeed a city of writers, and a city of stories, then this book is proof that it continues to do what it has always done best: take the trembling words of the young and, with the patience of the sea, teach them how to roar.