In 2009 he was chosen to be a Fellow for English Fiction at the Iligan National Writers' Workshop, held at Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan City[REF][REF][REF] - at the time one of only three institutionalized Writers' Workshops in the Philippines [REF].
The story developed from that workshop, "Alunsina's Sky", also won second place at MSU-IIT's 2009 Jimmy Balacuit Award for English Fiction [REF].