Joi Barrios-Leblanc serves as a Lecturer teaching Filipino and Philippine Literature at the University of California, Berkeley while on leave as an Associate Professor from the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD).

She has a Ph.D. in Filipino and Philippine Literature at the University of the Philippines and has served as Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the University of the Philippines College of Arts and Letters. She is the author/editor of more than a dozen books, among them, her canonical work, To Be a Woman is To Live at a Time of War, and Savage Stage: Plays by Ma-Yi Theater Company. For her contributions to literature, she was among the 100 women chosen as Weavers of History for the Philippine Centennial Celebration. In 2004, she received the TOWNS (Ten Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service) Award in the Philippines.

Joi received a 2012 Gintong Aklat [Golden Book] Award for Bulaklak sa Tubig: Mga Tula ng Pag-ibig at Himagsik, [Flowers in Water: Poems of Love and Revolt] from the Book Development Association in Manila.