Completing the requirements for her PhD in Comparative Literature, Hidalgo has found many opportunities to read Literary Theory as well as put these into practice in her own works.
She has worked as a writer, editor and teacher in Thailand, Lebanon, Korea, Myanmar (Burma) and New York, United States.
She has frequently published many of her creative and critical manuscripts in major publications in Finland, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States.
on Insomnia by Insomniacs" (2003), "My Fair Maladies: Funny Essays and Poems on Various Ailments and Afflictions" (2005), and "Tales of Fantasy and Enchantment" (2008).
She has encouraged many aspiring writers' efforts by editing their works: Shaking the Family Tree (1998) and Why I Travel and Other Essays by Fourteen Women (2000) with Erlinda Panlilio.
Hidalgo's critical essays, which reflect her interest in fictional writing by Filipino women, serves a much-needed contribution to a developing body of feminist scholarship in the country today.
The award is presented annually, since 1979, to selected Southeast Asian writers, generally for lifetime achievement, but sometimes also for a specific work.
Her latest books are What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up: Early Apprenticeship of a Writer (UP Press, 2021) and Collected Stories and Tales (USTPH, 2019).
Fellow writer Ophelia Dimalanta supports Hidalgo as she says in her review of "Recuerdo", that readers might have the tendency of commenting on "the contravening of some degree of verisimilitude in the narrating of the stories rendered through letters which come regularly and with such contrived continuity and incessantness."