JOEL M.

TOLEDO
Prepared by: Ellon Paala
JOEL M. TOLEDO
Joel M. Toledo is a Manila-based poet, author of
three books of poetry, winner of two Don
Carlos Palanca Awards for Poetry, and is the
first Asian to win the Bridport International
Creative Writing Prize. Toledo was a recipient of
The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center
residency in Bellagio, Italy in March 2011 and
the International Writing Program (IWP)
residency at the University of Iowa, USA
(August to November 2011).
JOEL M. TOLEDO
Toledo earned two undergraduate degrees in
Journalism (1992) and English (cum laude,
1994) and his Masters in Creative Writing
(Poetry) at the University of the Philippines,
Diliman, for which he was the recipient of the
Best Thesis award in the M.A. Level. He was a
former faculty member at U.P. Diliman. He is
currently a Literature professor at the English
Department of Miriam College and is the
Literary Editor of The Philippines Free Press
JOEL M. TOLEDO
His first published work was the novelette for
young adults Pedro and the Life Force (Giraffe
Books, 1997). As of this writing, he has
published three collections of poetry
Chiaroscuro (UST Press, 2008), The Long Lost
Startle (UP Press, 2009), and Ruins and
Reconstructions (Anvil, 2011). Chiaroscuro was
a finalist in the 2008 National Book Awards for
Poetry. Some of his poems and short stories
have come out in the Philippines Free Press
JOEL M. TOLEDO
Some of his poems have been published in
online poetry journals Softblow, Rogue Poetry
Review, Concelebratory Shoehorn, Washington
Square, Writers Connect, New Trespass, and the
Asia Pacific Writers Network. He is co-editor of
Under the Storm: An Anthology of
Contemporary Philippine Poetry
(.MOV/Antithesis Collective, 2011). Toledo is
currently working on a new collection of poems.
JOEL M. TOLEDO
Toledo has won the second and first prizes (2004 and
2005, respectively) in the Don Carlos Palanca
Memorial Awards for Poetry in English. He was
awarded the second prize for poetry in the 2006
Bridport Prize in United Kingdom for his poem The
Same Old Figurative. He also got the first and third
prize in the Meritage Press Poetry Prize in San
Francisco, USA. In 2006, he received the Philippine
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA)
Writers Prize for his poetry in English. He has likewise
won two honorable mention prizes in the 2007
Philippines Free Press Awards.
FAMOUS WORKS

The long lost PEDRO and Ruins and

startle (2009) the Reconstructio
LIFEFORCE n: Poems
(1997) (2011)
FAMOUS WORKS

Chiaroscuro: Fault setting

Poems (2008) (2016)