What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco: A Novel

Born in Tondo, Manila of Pampango parents from Lubao, Bienvenido N. Santos was a government pensionado to the United States in 1941. During the war years he studied at the University of Illinois, Columbia and Harvard and served with the Philippine government in exile in Washington, D.C. In 1946 he returned to the Philippines, taught school and became university administrator. In 1958 he was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the Writers Workshop in the University of Iowa where he later taught as a Fulbright Exchange professor. He has received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a Republic Cultural Heritage Award in Literature. In 1981, his alma mater, the University of the Philippines, and Bicol University in Legazpi City gave him honorary degrees in letters and the humanities. He was Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wichita State University from 1973 to 1982, and was awarded an honorary degree in humane letters upon his retirement. He now resides in Greeley, Colorado, but spends several months each year in the Philippines. In late 1986 to early 1087, he was Visiting Writer and Artist in Residence at De la Salle University in Manila.