J. Neil C. Garcia teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where he serves as a Fellow for Poetry in the Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and works in literary and cultural criticism. Between 1994 and 2014, he coedited the famous Ladlad series of Philippine gay writing. Other important anthologies that he edited are Aura: The Gay Theme in Philippine Fiction in English (2012), Bright Sign, Bright Age: Critical Essays in Philippines Studies (2017), Busilak: New LGBTQ Poetry from the Philippines (2020) and Lamyos: New LGBTQ Fiction from the Philippines (2022). He was the lead academic investigator for the Philippines of Project GlobalGRACE: Global Gender and Cultures of Equality, a world-wide research and arts consortium sponsored by the Research Councils of the United Kingdom and Goldsmiths, University of London, which concluded its operations in December of 2021. For its final activity, he directed the first National Teacher Training Seminar on Philippine Queer Literature, which utilized the digital archives of literary and artistic works that had come out of the GlobalGRACE residencies and workshops. He recently directed an iteration/continuation of this Work Package, from which a new region-wide project is expected to emerge: The GlobalGRACE Forum/Workshop on Advancing LGBTQ Rights and Economic Opportunities Through Creative Practice Across South East Asia, held at the UP Hotel in June of 2024. His The Burden of the Oral & Other Reviews: Philippine Film & Theater, 2011-2019, Kumustahan: Creative Writing in the Philippines, and Our Literate Orality: Publishing, Readership, and Writing in the Philippines are recent titles of the Philippine Writers Series of the Likhaan. He is currently at work on manuscripts in Creative Writing Studies and Philippine Queer Studies.