[1] She was awarded the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction, and earlier gained recognition for her poetry, particularly her first two collections, Men Love Chocolates But They Don't Say (2002) and The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami (2006).
Besides her career as a writer, Barya has also worked as a Human Resource Advisor for Ernst & Young in Uganda,[5][6][7] and currently teaches Creative Writing as a faculty member of the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
She also while at college joined FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers Association, where she worked closely with Goretti Kyomuhendo, then Program Coordinator, and Violet Barungi, then FEMRITE editor.
Yusuf Serunkuma Kajura, a reviewer for The Weekly Observer (Uganda) claimed that Barya's "poetry blossoms on indigenous African imagery, rhetorical devices and ideas, easily comparable to Okot p'Bitek's long poem, Song of Lawino."
"[16] Barya's short fiction has appeared in FEMRITE anthologies, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, African Love Stories, Picador Africa, and Pambazuka News.