Reine Bautista Mercado is a devoted writer of feminist literature and a vehement advocate of women's rights, LGBT equality, and social justice in the Philippines and in Southeast and East Asia. After acquiring her degree for languages at the prestigious University of the Philippines with honours, she has been avidly volunteering for many organisations that support her advocacies and uses her skills for languages to connect with many people in Southeast and East Asia. Herself a transgender woman, she devotes her writing to literature that empowers women and members of the LGBT, as well as other minorities in Asia.