Her 1952 short story, (the widely anthologized) "The Virgin", won two first prizes: of the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards and of the Palanca Awards. In 1957, she edited an anthology for the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, with English and Tagalog prize-winning short stories from 1951 to 1952. Her short stories “The Trap” (1956), “The Giants” (1959), “The Tourists” (1960), “The Sounds of Sunday” (1961) and “A Various Season” (1966) all won the first prize of the Palanca Awards.