He is a multiple winner of the Palanca Literary Prize, commonly referred to as the Pulitzer of the Philippines. Born in 1967, Pascual grew up queer on a cattle ranch during the Marcos dictatorship. He moved to Thailand and later, to the United States where he continued working abroad for international nonprofits in Asia and Africa. Willi lives with his husband Jack in San Francisco where he is finishing a collection of his personal essays, The Shadow Master. While in Thailand, he traveled to the U.S. and attended writing workshops at New York University and the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley. He was also a Breadloaf Fellow for Nonfiction. He moved to the United States in 2005 and continued working for nonprofits. A program he led with local authors and artists in Asia and Africa won the 2013 UNESCO Confucius Literacy Prize for publishing hundreds of new original children's books in local languages. ​