Marisa de los Santos
(Ph.D.’96)
UH Creative Writing Alumna

The literary buzz grows daily about UH alumna Marisa de los Santos (Ph.D. ’96). The daughter of a surgeon father from the Philippines and a nurse mother from Maryland, Marisa grew up in Maryland and northern Virginia.

She gained early success with her poetry collection From The Bones Out (University of South Carolina Press, 1999, 96 pages).

Marisa went on to write Love Walked In (Plume, 2006, 320 pages), sitting at #13 (in the second week of June) on Amazon’s list of Contemporary Romance novels. Publishers Weekly asked the question: “Chick lit?” You bet: with rights sold in at least eight countries, and, indeed, to Paramount—where Sarah Jessica Parker will star and coproduce with Sideway’s Michael London.

Her second novel, Belong to Me (William Morrow, 2008, 400 pages), debuted earlier this year and ranked #56 on Amazon’s list of Literary books. Barnes & Noble included the novel in the Barnes & Noble Recommends series, calling it “unputdownable” and “especially appropriate for book discussion groups.”

Marisa teaches at the University of Delaware, as does her husband, David Teague, whom she met while she was getting her master’s degree at Sarah Lawrence College. The couple has two children, Charles (8) and Annabel (6).