J. Neil C. Garcia is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and literature professor. His collections of poems are Closet Quivers (1992), Our Lady of the Carnival (1996), The Sorrows of Water (2000), Kaluluwa (2001), The Garden of Wordlessness (2005), and Misterios and Other Poems (2005).
A leading scholar on postcolonialism as well as Philippine gay literature and criticism, Garcia published his doctoral dissertation titled Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques in 2004. He also authored Philippine Gay Culture: The Last 30 Years: Binabae to Bakla, Silahis to MSM (1996), Closet Queeries (1997), Slip/pages: Essays in Philippine Gay Criticism, 1991-96 (1998), and Performing the Self: Occasional Prose (2003). He co-edited with Danton Remoto the Ladlad anthology series of gay literature (1994, 1996, and 2007). Garcia’s writings were also collected in Myths and Metaphors (2002) and Myth and Writing: Occasional Prose (2016).
Garcia has been recognized at the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for his poems and essays. He also won multiple times at the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards for his poems and essays as well as the National Book Awards for literary criticism and poetry. Garcia was also recognized for his poetry in the Procyon Poetry Prize In 1992.
He was also recognized with the University of the Philippines (UP) International Publication Award, the Gawad Chanselor Outstanding Artist for Literature, and the Outstanding Published Research award.
He was born on July 16, 1969 in Manila. Garcia took his elementary education at the Immaculate Conception Academy of Manila and Far Eastern University. He finished high school at the University of Santo Tomas High School in 1986. Garcia earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Santo Tomas in 1990.
Garcia graduated with a master’s degree in comparative literature in 1994 and a doctor of philosophy in creative writing in 2003 from UP Diliman where he has taught literature and creative writing. He has served as the director of the UP Press and is currently a resident fellow at the Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing.