Joel M. Toledo is the author of seven books of poetry and the recipient of the 2025 Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for Poetry in English. A 2006 NCCA Writers Prize awardee, he has won various awards for his poetry, including the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award, the 2025 Nick Joaquin Literary Award Poet of the Year, and the Bridport Prize. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, The Prairie Schooner, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Kritika Kultura, the Likhaan Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, and The Washington Square. He has co-edited local and international poetry journals and anthologies including Caracoa, Under the Storm, and Cordite Poetry Review. A recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Poetry Residency in Bellagio, Italy in 2011 and 2023, Toledo was a poetry fellow of the 2011 International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, USA. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Santo Tomas and is a Resident Fellow of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies.