Benjamin Bac Sierra

Ben Bac Sierra's personal story of transformation is a model for anyone looking to surmount life's challenges. Raised by a widowed mother and the San Francisco Mission District streets, Ben lived a harsh 'homeboy' existence until an equally harsh stint in the United States Marine Corps at age seventeen set him on an unlikely trajectory from veteran Gulf War combat veteran to professor and writer.

After his honorable discharge from the Marines, where he participated in front line combat during the first Gulf War, Ben completed his B.A. in English at U.C. Berkeley, earned a teaching credential and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and merited a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Currently, he is a professor at the City College of San Francisco, a curriculum developer and instructor for HOMEY SF and Gateway National Network, and a community activist throughout the Bay Area. Ben's essays and stories have been published in many publications, including World Literature Today, where he was featured as a prominent emerging author. His 2011 novel Barrio Bushido was presented a Best of the Bay Award and an International Latino Book Award.

"Benjamin Bac Sierra is an American Dostoevsky, and BARRIO BUSHIDO is our CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Given the conditions of their lives, how can Lobo, Toro, and Santo become honorable, heroic men? Their story is at once a thriller and a big novel."

--Maxine Hong-Kingston, The Woman Warrior

"A Latino Elmore Leonard."

--Earl Shorris, author of The Life and Times of Mexico

Benjamin Bac Sierra moves from lyrical beauty to savage brutality with all the grace of the symbolic matador who haunts his gripping novel of criminal life in a California barrio. Bac Sierra's voice gets inside your head and stays there, binding the reader to the compelling narrative as tightly as the novel's characters are bound to the twisted code of criminal honor that leads to their tragic downfall.

--Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

To find out more about Ben and his writing, please visit http://todobododown.wordpress.com/