Cristian Carlo Suller is a graduate teaching assistant and a PhD student at the University of Texas at Dallas. He finished his bachelor's degree in journalism and master's degree in literature at the University of Santo Tomas, and where he is also a fellow of the Third Varsitarian Fiction Workshop. His poems are published in the Ubbog Journal, the official publication of the Ubbog Cordillera Young Writers Guild. He has also published an article in the Philippine National Book Awards finalist Hoy, Boy! A Festschrift for Delfin Tolentino, Jr. His latest poem, "Of Irony" is slotted for publication in Cold Mountain Review.
He has taught students of different levels--elementary school, middle school, high school, community college, and the university--and, at some point, he became a school principal. He has not been anything else and has done no other job than being a teacher. Generally, students appreciate his open and casual manner of communicating. He was once asked why he dresses very casually--usually just a khaki, a plain shirt, and a sports jacket--and his response was, "I don't want to appear smarter than I am. I generally feel that it is better to be underestimated by the general public, than be overestimated only to gravely dismay." Think along the lines of Bleach's Kisuke Urahara. Or Po, the Kung Fu Panda.
When he is not teaching or writing academic papers, he reads poems written by his favorite authors like Nomi Stone, Ophelia Dimalanta, Ilya Kaminsky, and Allen Ginsberg, among a few others. His biggest literary influences include Epifanio San Juan Jr., Delfin Tolentino Jr., Viet Thanh Nguyen, J. Neil Garcia, and William Carlos Williams.